
Book_ iLiiiLipS 

Gop}iight>l^. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSFT. 






jfamous ^oinen. 



MARY LAMB. 



The next volumes in the Famous Women Series 

will be: 

Margaret Fuller. By Julia Ward Howe. 
Maria Edgeworth. By Miss Zimmern. 

Already published : 

George Eliot. By Miss Blind. 
Emily Bronte. By Miss Robinson. 
George Sand. By Miss Thomas. 
Mary Lamb. By Mrs. Gilchrist. 




, N .\., 



Mary Lamb. 



3P 



BY 



ANNE GILCHRIST. 




BOSTON: 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1883. 






Copyright, 1S83, 
By Roberts Brothers. 



University Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



PREFACE. 



I AM indebted to Mrs. Henry Watson, a grand- 
daughter of Mr. Gillman, for one or two 
interesting reminiscences, and for a hitherto 
unpublished "notelet" by Lamb (page 327), 
together with an omitted paragraph from a 
published letter (page 1 10), which confirms what 
other letters also show, — that the temporary 
estrangement between Lamb and Coleridge 
was mainly due to the influence of the morbid 
condition of mind of their common friend, 
Charles Lloyd. 

My thanks are also due to Mr. Potts for some 
bibliographic details respecting the various 
editions of the Tales from Shakespeare. 

Reprinted here, for the first time, is a little 
essay on Needlework (regarded from an indus- 
trial, not an "art" point of view), by Mary 
Lamb (page 244), unearthed from an obscure 
and long-deceased periodical — The British 



vi PREFACE. 

Lady s Magazine — for which I have to thank 
Mr. Edward Solly, F. R. S. 

The reader will find, also, the only letter that 
has been preserved from Coleridge to Lamb, 
who destroyed all the rest in a moment of 
depression (pages 32-3). This letter is given, 
without exact date or name of the person to 
whom it was addressed, in Gillman's unfinished 
Life of Coleridge, as having been written "to 
a friend in great anguish of mind on the sudden 
death of his mother," and has, I believe, never 
before been identified. But the internal evi- 
dence that it was to Lamb is decisive. 

In taking Mary as the central figure in the 
following narrative, woven mainly from her 
own and her brother's letters and writings, it 
is to that least explored time, from 1796 to 
181 5 — before they had made the acquaintance 
of Judge Talfourd, Proctor, Patmore, De Quin- 
cey and other friends, who have left written 
memorials of them — that we are brought 
nearest ; the period, that is, of Charles' youth 
and early manhood. For Mary was the elder 
by ten years ; and there is but little to tell of 
the last twenty of her eighty-three years of 



PRE FA CE. vu 

life, when the burthen of age was added to 
that of her sad malady. 

The burial register of St. Andrew's, Holborn, 
in which churchyard Lamb's father, mother and 
Aunt Hetty were buried, shows that the father 
survived his wife's tragic death nearly three 
years instead of only a few months, as Talfourd 
and others following him have supposed. It is 
"a date of some interest, because not till then 
did brother and sister begin together their life 
of " double singleness " and entire mutual 
devotion. Also, in sifting the letters for facts 
and dates, I find that Lamb lived in Chapel 
street, Pentonville, not, as Talfourd and Proctor 
thought, a few months, but three years, remov- 
ing thither almost immediately after the moth- 
er's death. It is a trifle, yet not without 
interest to the lovers of Lamb, for these were 
the years in which he met in his daily walks, 
and loved but never accosted, the beautiful 
Quakeress " Hester," whose memory is en- 
shrined in the poem beginning " When maidens 
such as Hester die." 

Anne Gilchrist.' 

Keats Corner, Hampstead. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGB. 

Parentage and Childhood . . • . . . i 

CHAPTER n. 

Birth of Charles. — Coleridge. — Domestic Toils and 
Trials. — Their Tragic Culmination. — Letters 
to and from Coleridge ..... 23 

CHAPTER III. 
Death of Aunt Hetty. — Mary removed from the 
Asylum. — Charles Lloyd. — A Visit to Nether 
Stowey, and Introduction to Wordsworth and 
his Sister. — Anniversary of the Mother's 
Death. — Mary ill again. — Estrangement 
between Lamb and Coleridge. — Speedy Recon- 
cilement 47 

CHAPTER IV. 

Death of the Father. — Mary comes Home to live. — 
A Removal. — First Verses. — A Literary Tea- 
party. — Another Move. — Friends increase . 72 

CHAPTER V. 

Personal Appearance and Manners. — Health. — 

Influence of Mary's Illnesses upon her Brother 84 

CHAPTER VI. 

Visit to Coleridge at Greta Hall. — Wordsworth and 
his Sister in London. — Letters to Miss Stod- 
dart. — Coleridge goes to Malta. — Letter to 
Dorothy Wordsworth on the Death of her 
Brother John 106 

CHAPTER VII. 

Mary in the Asylum again. — Lamb's Letter, with a 
Poem of hers. — Her slow Recovery. — Letters 
to Sara Stoddart. — The Tales from Shakes- 
peare begun. — Hazlitt's Portrait of Lamb. — 
Sara's Lovers. — The Farce of Mr. H. . 129 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Tales from Shakespeare. — Letters to Sara 

Stoddart I54 

CHAPTER IX. 

Correspondence with Sara Stoddart. — Hazlitt. — A 
Courtship and Wedding, at which Mary is 
Bridesmaid . i68 

CHAPTER X. 

Mrs. Leicester'' s School. — A Removal. — Poetry for 

Children ....... 207 

CHAPTER XI. 

The Hazlitts again. — Letters to Mrs. Hazlitt. — Two 
Visits to Winterslow. — Mr. Dawe, R. A. -^ 
Birth of Hazlitt's Son. — Death of Holcroft. 223 

CHAPTER XII. 

An Essay on Needlework ... . 243 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Letters to Miss Betham and her little Sister. — To 
Wordsworth. — Manning's Return. — Coleridge 
goes to Highgate. — Letter to Miss Hutchinson 
on Mary's State. — Removal to Russell Street. — 
Mary's Letter to Dorothy Wordsworth. — Lodg- 
ings at Dalston. — ■ Death of John Lamb and 
Captain Burney 256 

CHAPTER XIV. 

HazHtt's Divorce. — "Ejnma Isola. — Mrs, Cowden 
Clarke's Recollections of Mary. — The Visit to 
France. — Removal to Colebrook Cottage. — A 
Dialogue of Reminiscences .... 285 

CHAPTER XV. 

Lamb's ill Health. — Retirement from the India House, 
and subsequent Illness. — Letter from Mary to 
Lady Stoddart. — Colebrook Cottage quitted. — 
Mary's constant Attacks. — A Home given up. — 
Board with the Westwoods. — ■ Death of Haz- 
litt. — Removal to Edmonton. — Marriage of 
Emma Isola. — -Mary's sudden Recovery. — 111 
again. — Death of Coleridge. — Death of 
Charles. — Mary's Last Days and Death . 309 



LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 



Life^ Letters arid Writings of Charles Lamb. Edited 

by Percy Fitzgerald, M. A., F. S. A. 1876. 
The Works of Charles Lamb. Edited by Charles Kent, 

(in which, for the first time, the dates and original 

mode of publication were affixed to the Essays, 

etc.) 1878. 
Poetry for Children, by Charles and Mary Lamb. 

Edited by Richard Heme Shepherd. 1878. 
Mrs. Leicester'' s School., by Charles and Mary Lamb. 
Tales from. Shakespeare, by Charles and Mary Lamb. 

1807. 
Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, by Talf ourd. 1 848. 
Charles Lamb : A Memoir, by Barry Cornwall. 1866. 
Mary and Charles Lamb, by W. Carew Hazlitt. 1874. 
My Friends and Acquaintance, by P. G. Patmore. 1854. 
Letters, Conversations and Recollections of Coleridge^ 

by Thomas AUsop. Third edition. 1864. 
Early Recollections of Coleridge, by J. Cottle. 1837. 
Biographia Literaria, by Coleridge. Second edition. 

1847. 
Life of Coleridge, by Gillman. Vol. L 1838. 
Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge. Edited by her 

Daughter. 1873. 
Life of Wordsworth, by Rev. Dr. C. Wordsworth. 

1851. 



xii LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 

A Chronological List of the Writings of Hazlitt and 
Leigh Hunt, preceded by an Essay on La7nb, and 
List of his Works, by Alex. Ireland; printed for 
private circulation. (The copy used contains many 
MS. additions by the author.) 1868. 

Recollections of Writers, by Charles and Mary Cowden 
Clarke. 1878. 

Six Life Studies of Famous Wotnen, by M. Betham 
Edwards. 1880. 

Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence of Henry 
Crabb Robinson, Edited by Dr. Sadler. 1869. 

Memoirs of William Hazlitt, by W. Carew Hazlitt. 
1867. 

spirit of the Age. | Hazlitt. 1825, 1826. 
Table Talk. ) 

Autobiographical Sketches. I Og Quincey. 1863. 
Lakes and Lake Poets. S 

William Godwin, his Friends and Contemporaries, by 
Kegan Paul. 1876. 



MARY LAMB. 



CHAPTER I. 

Parentage and Childhood. 
' ' 1 764-1 775. — JEt. i-io. 

The story of Mary Lamb's life is mainly the 
story of a brother and sister's love ; of how it 
sustained them under the shock of a terrible 
calamity, and made beautiful and even happy a 
life which must else have sunk into desolation 
and despair. 

It is a record, too, of many friendships. 
Round the biographer of Mary as of Charles, 
the blended stream of whose lives cannot be 
divided into two distinct currents, there gathers 
a throng of faces — radiant, immortal faces 
some, many homely, every-day faces, a few 
almost grotesque — -whom he can no more shut 
out of his pages, if he would give a faithful 
picture of life and character, than Charles or 
Mary could have shut their humanity-loving 
hearts or hospitable doors against them. First 



2 MARY LAMB. 

comes Coleridge, earliest and best -beloved 
friend of all, to whom Mary was " a most dear 
heart's sister ; " Wordsworth and his sister 
Dorothy ; Southey ; Hazlitt, who, quarrel with 
whom he might, could not effectually quarrel 
with the Lambs ; his wife, also, without whom 
Mary would have been a comparatively silent 
figure to us, a presence rather than a voice. 
But all kinds were welcome so there were but 
character ; the more variety the better. " I 
am made up of queer points," wrote Lamb, 
"and I want so many answering needles." 
And of both brother and sister it may be said 
that their likes wore as well as most people's 
loves. 

Mary Anne Lamb was born in Crown Office 
Row, Inner Temple, on the 3d of December, 
1764, — year of Hogarth's death. She was the 
third, as Charles was the youngest, of seven 
children, all of whom died in infancy, save 
these two and an elder brother John, her senior 
by two years. One little sister, Elizabeth, who 
came when Mary was four years old, lived long 
enough to imprint an image on the child's 
memory which, helped by a few relics, remained 
for life. " The little cap with white satin rib- 
bon grown yellow with long keeping, and a lock 
of light hair," wrote Mary when she was near 
sixty, " always brought her pretty, fair face to 



PARENTAGE. 3 

my view, so that to this day I seem to have a 
perfect recollection of her features." 

The family of the Lambs came originally 
from Stamford in Lincolnshire, as Charles him- 
self once told a correspondent. Nothing else 
is known of Mary's ancestry ; nor yet even the 
birth-place or earliest circumstances of John 
Lamb, the father. If, however, we may accept 
on Mr. Cowden Clarke's authority, corroborated 
by internal evidence, the little story of Susan 
Vates, contributed by Charles to Mrs. Leices- 
ter s School, as embodying some of his father's 
earliest recollections, he was born of parents 
''in no very affluent circumstances," in a lonely 
part of the fen country, seven miles from the 
nearest church, an occasional visit to which, 
"just to see how goodness thrived,'^ was a feat 
to be remembered, such bad and dangerous 
walking was it in the fens in those days, "a 
mile as good as four." What is quite certain is 
that while John Lamb was still a child his fam- 
ily removed to Lincoln, with means so strait- 
ened that he was sent to service in London. 
Whether his father were dead, or, sadder still, 
in a lunatic asylum — since we are told with 
emphasis that the hereditary seeds of madness 
in the Lamb family came from the father's 
side, — it is beyond doubt that misfortune of 
some kind must have been the cause of the 



4 MARY LAMB. 

child's being sent thus prematurely to earn his 
bread in service. His subsequently becoming 
a barrister's clerk seems to indicate that his 
early nurture and education had been of a 
gentler kind than this rough thrusting out into 
the world of a mere child would otherwise 
imply : in confirmation of which it is to be 
noted that afterwards, in the dark crisis of 
family misfortune, "an old gentlewoman of for- 
tune" appears on the scene as a relative. 

In spite of early struggles John Lamb grew up 

A merry, cheerful man. A merrier man, 
A man more apt to frame matter for mirth, 
Mad jokes and antics for a Christmas-eve, 
Making life social and the laggard time 
To move on nimbly, never yet did cheer 
The little circle of domestic friends. 

Inflexibly honest and upright, too, with a dash 
of chivalry in his nature. Who is not familiar 
with his portrait as '' Lovel " in The Benchers 
of the Inner Temple? Elizabeth, his wife, a 
native of Ware, whose maiden name was Field, 
was many years younger than himself. She 
was a handsome, dignified-looking woman ; like 
her husband, fond of pleasure ; a good and affec- 
tionate mother, also, in the main, yet lacking 
insight into the characters of her children — 
into Mary's, at any rate, towards whom she 
never manifested that maternal tenderness 



PARENTAGE. 5 

which makes the heart wise whatever the head 
may be. Mary, a shy, sensitive, nervous, affec- 
tionate child, who early showed signs of a lia- 
bility to brain disorder, above all things needed 
tender and judicious care. '' Her mother loved 
her," wrote Charles, in after years, "as she 
loved us all, with a mother's love ; but in 
opinion, in feeling and sentiment and disposition, 
bore so distant a resemblance to her daughter 
that she never understood her right — never 
could believe how much she loved her, — but 
met her caresses, her protestations of filial 
affection, too frequently with coldness and 
repulse. Still she was a good mother. God 
forbid I should think of her but most respect- 
fully, most affectionately. Yet she would always 
love my brother above Mary, who was not 
worthy of one-tenth of that affection which 
Mary had a right to claim." 

John, the eldest, a handsome, lively, active 
boy, was just what his good looks and his being 
the favorite were likely to make of a not very 
happily endowed nature. ''Dear, little, selfish, 
craving John " he was in childhood, -and dear, 
big, selfish John he remained in manhood ; 
treated with tender indulgence by his brother 
and sister, who cheerfully exonerated him from 
taking up any share of the burthen of sorrow 
and privation which became the portion of his 



6 MARY LAMB. 

family by the time he was grown up and 
prosperously afloat. 

A maiden aunt, a worthy but uncanny old 
soul, whose odd, silent ways and odder witch- 
like mutterings and mumblings, coupled with a 
wild look in her eyes as she peered out from 
under her spectacles, made her an object of 
dread rather than love to Mary, as afterwards 
to Charles, in whom she garnered up her heart, 
completed the family group, but did not add to 
its harmony, for she and her sister-in-law ill 
agreed. They were, in "their different ways," 
wrote Mary, looking back on childhood from 
middle-life, " the best creatures in the world ; 
but they set out wrong at first. They made 
each other miserable for full twenty years of 
their lives. My mother was a perfect gentle- 
woman ; my aunty as unlike a gentlewoman as 
you can possibly imagine a good old woman to 
be ; so that my dear mother (who, though you 
do not know it, is always in my poor head and 
heart) used to distress and weary her with 
incessant and unceasing attention and polite- 
ness to gain her affection. The old woman 
could not return this in kind and did not know 
what to make of it — thought it all deceit, and 
used to hate my mother with a bitter hatred, 
which, of course, was soon returned with inter- 
est. A little frankness and looking into each 



CHILDHOOD. y 

other's characters at first would have spared 
all this, and they would have lived as they died, 
fond of each other for the last ten years of their 
lives. XVhen we grew up and harmonized them 
a little they sincerely loved each other." 

In these early days Mary's was a comfortable 
though a very modest home ; a place of "snug 
fire-sides, the low-built roof, parlors ten feet by 
ten, frugal boards, and all the homeliness of 
home ; " a wholesome soil to be planted in, 
which permitted no helplessness in the practi- 
cal details of domestic life ; above poverty in 
the actual though not in the conventional sense 
of the word. Such book-learning as fell to her 
lot was obtained at a day-school in Fetter Lane, 
Holborn, where, notwithstanding the inscription 
over the door, *' Mr. William Bird, Teacher of 
Mathematics and Languages," reading in the 
mother-tongue, writing and " ciphering" were 
all that was learned. The school-room looked 
into a dingy, discolored garden, in the passage 
leading from Fetter Lane into Bartlett's Build- 
ings ; and there boys were taught in the morn- 
ing and their sisters in the afternoon by "a 
gentle usher" named Starkey, whose subsequent 
misfortunes have rescued him and Mary's school- 
days from oblivion. For, having in his old age 
drifted into an almshouse at Newcastle, the tale 
of his wanderings and his woes found its way 



8 MARY LAMB. 

into print and finally into Hone's Every Day 
Booky where, meeting the eyes of Charles and 
Mary Lamb, it awakened in both old memories 
which took shape in the sketch called Captain 
Starkey. 

" Poor Starkey, when young, had that peculiar 
stamp of old-fashionedness in his face which 
makes it impossible for a beholder to predict 
any particular age in the object : you can scarce 
make a guess between seventeen and seven- 
and-thirty. This antique cast always seems to 
promise ill luck and penury. Yet it seems he 
was not always the abject thing he came to. 
My sister, who well remembers him, can hardly 
forgive Mr. Thomas Ranson for making an 
etching so unlike her idea of him when he was 
at Mr. Bird's school. Old age and poverty, a 
life-long poverty, she thinks, could at no time 
have effaced the marks of native gentility which 
were once so visible in a face otherwise strik- 
ingly ugly, thin and careworn. From her rec- 
ollections of him, she thinks he would have 
wanted bread before he would have begged or 
borrowed a halfpenny. ' If any of the girls,' 
she says, * who were my school-fellows should 
be reading through their aged spectacles tidings 
from the dead of their youthful friend Starkey, 
they will feel a pang as I do at having teased 
his gentle spirit.' 



SCHOOL-DAYS. 9 

''They were big girls, it seems, too old to 
attend his instructions with the silence neces- 
sary ; and, however old age and a long state of 
beggary seems to have reduced his writing fac- 
ulties to a state of imbecility, in those days his 
language occasionally rose to the bold and fig- 
urative, for, when he was in despair to stop 
their chattering, his ordinary phrase was, 
' Ladies, if you will not hold your peace, not all 
the powers in heaven can make you.' Once he 
was missing for a day or two ; he had run away. 
A little, old, unhappy-looking man brought him 
back — it was his father, and he did no business 
in the school that day, but sat moping in a corner 
with his hands before his face ; the girls, his 
tormentors, in pity for his case, for the rest of 
the day forbore to annoy him. 

'' ' I had been there but a few months,' adds 
she, ' when Starkey, wiio was the chief instruct- 
or of us girls, communicated to us a profound 
secret, that the tragedy of Cato was shortly to 
be acted by the elder boys, and that we were to 
be invited to the representation.' That Starkey 
lent a helping hand in fashioning the actors, she 
remembers ; and, but for his unfortunate person, 
he might have had some distinguished part in 
the scene to enact. As it was, he had the ardu- 
ous task of prompter assigned to him, and his 
feeble voice was heard clear and distinct repeat- 



10 MARY LAMB. 

ing the text during the whole performance. 
She describes her recollection of the cast of 
characters even now with a relish : Martia, by 
the handsome Edgar Hickman, who afterwards 
went to Africa, and of whom she never after- 
wards heard tidings ; Lucia, by Master Walker, 
whose sister was her particular friend ; Cato, by 
John Hunter, a masterly declaimer, but a plain 
boy, and shorter by a head than his two sons in 
the scene, etc. In conclusion, Starkey appears 
to have been one of those mild spirits which, 
not originally deficient in understanding, are 
crushed by penury into dejection and feebleness. 
He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not 
an ornament to society, if fortune had taken 
him into a very little fostering ; but wanting 
that, he became a captain — a by-word - — and 
lived and died a broken bulrush." 

But the chief and best part of Mary's educa- 
tion was due to the fact that her fathers 
employer, Mr. Salt, had a good library, '^ into 
which she was tumbled early" and suffered to 
" browse there without much selection or prohi- 
bition." A little selection, however, would have 
made the pasturage all the wholsomer to a child 
of Mary's sensitive, brooding nature ; for the 
witch stories and cruel tales' of the sufferings of 
the martyrs on which she pored all alone, as her 
brother did after her, wrought upon her tender 



VISITS TO THE COUNTRY. II 

brain and lent their baleful aid to nourish those 
seeds of madness which she inherited, as may 
be inferred from a subsequent adventure. 

When tripping to and from school or playing 
in the Temple Gardens Mary must sometimes, 
though we have no record of the fact, have set 
eyes on Oliver Goldsmith : for the first ten 
years of her life were the last of his, spent, 
though with frequent sojourns elsewhere, in the 
Temple. And in the Temple churchyard he 
w^as buried, just ten months before the birth of 
Charles. 

The London born and bred child had occa- 
sional tastes of joyous, healthful life in the 
country, for her mother had hospitable relatives 
in her native county, pleasant Hertfordshire. 
Specially was there a great-aunt married to a 
substantial yeoman named Gladman, living at 
Mackery End within a gentle walk of Wheat- 
hampstead, the visits to whom remained in 
Mary's memory as the most delightful recol- 
lections of her childhood. In after-life she 
embodied them, mingling fiction with fact, in a 
story called Louisa Mamters, or the Farm-housey 
where she tells in sweet and child-like words of 
the ecstasy of a little four-year-old girl on find- 
ing herself for the first time in the midst of 
fields quite full of bright, shining yellow flowers, 
with sheep and young lambs feeding ; of the 



12 MARY LAMB, 

inexhaustible interest of the farm-yard, the 
thresher in the barn with his terrifying flail and 
black beard, the collection of eggs and search- 
ing for scarce violets ("if we could find eggs 
and violets too, what happy children we were") ; 
of the hay-making and the sheep-shearing, the 
great wood fires and the farrn-house suppers. 

This will recall to the reader Elia's Mackery 
E7id ; how, forty years afterwards, brother and 
sister revisited the old farm-house one day in 
the midst of June, and how Bridget (so he 
always called Mary in print) " remembered her 
old acquaintance again ; some altered features, 
of course, a little grudged at. At first, indeed, 
she was ready to disbelieve for joy; but the 
scene soon reconfirmed itself in her affections, 
and she traversed every out-post of the old 
mansion, to the wood -house, the orchard, 
the place where the pigeon-house had stood 
(house and birds were alike flown), with a 
breathless impatience of recognition which was 
more pardonable, perhaps, than decorous at the 
age of fifty-odd. But Bridget in some things is 
behind her years." 

*' . . . The only thing left was to get into 
the house, and that was a difficulty which to 
me singly would have been insurmountable, for 
I am terribly shy in making myself kncwn to 
strangers and out - of - date kinsfolk. Love, 



VISITS TO THE COUNTRY. 1 3 

stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in 
without me ; but she soon returned with a 
creature that might have sat to a sculptor for 
the image of Welcome. . . . To have seen 
Bridget and her, — it was like the meeting of 
the two scriptural cousins ! There was a grace 
and dignity, an amplitude of form and stature, 
answering to her mind in this farmer's wife, 
which would have shined in a palace. ..." 

To return to the days of childhood, Mary also 
paid visits to her maternal grandmother Field, 
housekeeper to the Plumers at their stately but 
forsaken mansion of Blakesware ; but here the 
pleasure was mingled with a kind of weird 
solemnity. Mary has left on record her experi- 
ences in a tale which forms a sort of pendant to 

Blakesmoor in H shire, by Elia. Her story 

is called Margaret Green, the Young Mahoinetan, 
also from Mrs. Leicester's School, and, apart 
from a slight framework of invention ("Mrs. 
Beresford," her grandmother, being represented 
as the owner instead of housekeeper of the 
mansion), is minutely autobiographical. "Every 
morning when she (Mrs. Beresford) saw me, she 
used to nod her head very kindly and say, ' How 
do you do, little Margaret } ' But I do not 
recollect that she ever spoke to me during the 
remainder of the day, except, indeed, after I 
had read the psalms and the chapters which 



14 MARY LAMB. 

was my daily task ; then she used constantly to 
observe that I improved in my reading, and 
frequently added, *I never heard a child read so 
distinctly.' When my daily portion of reading 
was over I had a taste of needlework, which 
generally lasted half an hour. I was not 
allowed to pass more time in reading or work, 
because my eyes were very weak, for which 
reason I was always set to read in the large- 
print family Bible. I was very fond of reading, 
and when I could, unobserved, steal a few min- 
utes as they- were intent on their work, I used 
to delight to read in the historical part of the 
Bible ; but this, because of my eyes, was a for- 
bidden pleasure, and the Bible being never 
removed out of the room, it was only for a 
short time together that I dared softly to lift 
up the leaves and peep into it. As I was per- 
mitted to walk in the garden or wander about 
the house whenever I pleased, I used to leave 
the parlor for hours together, and make out my 
own solitary amusement as well as I could. My 
first visit was always to a very large hall, which, 
from being paved with marble, was called the 
Marble Hall. The heads of the twelve Caesars 
were hung round the hall. Every day I mounted 
on the chairs to look at them and to read 
the inscriptions underneath, till I became per- 
fectly familiar with their names and features. 



BLAKESWARE. 1 5 

Hogarth's prints were below the Caesars. I 
was very fond of looking at them and endeavor- 
ing to make out their meaning. An old broken 
battledore and some shuttlecocks with most of 
the feathers missing were on a marble slab 
in one corner of the hall, which' constantly- 
reminded me that there had once been younger 
inhabitants here than the old lady and her 
gray-headed servants. In another corner stood 
a marble figure of a satyr ; every day I laid my 
hand on his shoulder to feel how cold he was. 
This hall opened into a room full of family por- 
traits. They were all in dresses of former 
times ; some were old men and women, and 
some were children. I used to long to have a 
fairy's power to call the children down from 
their frames to play with me. One little girl 
in particular, who hung by the side of the glass 
door which opened into the garden, I often 
invited to walk there with me ; but she still 
kept her station, one arm round a little lamb's 
neck and in her hand a large bunch of roses. 
From this room I usually proceeded to the 
garden. When I was weary of the garden I 
wandered over the rest of the house. The best 
suite of rooms I never saw by any other light 
than what glimmered through the tops of the 
window-shutters, which, however, served to 
show the carved chimney-pieces and the curi- 



1 6 MARY LAMB. 

ous old ornaments about the rooms ; but the 
worked furniture and carpets of wKich I had 
heard such constant praises I could have but 
an imperfect sight of, peeping under the covers 
which were kept over them by the dim light ; 
for I constantly lifted up a corner of the envious 
cloth that hid these highly-praised rareties from 
my view. 

" The bed-rooms were also regularly explored 
by me, as well to admire the antique furniture 
as for the sake of contemplating the tapestry 
hangings, which were full of Bible history. The 
subject of the one which chiefly attracted my 
attention was Hagar and her son Ishmael. 
Every day I admired the beauty of the youth, 
and pitied the forlorn state of him and his 
mother in the wilderness. At the end of the 
gallery into which these tapestry rooms opened 
was one door which, having often in vain 
attempted to open, I concluded to be locked ; 
and finding myself shut out, I was very desirous 
of seeing what it contained, and though still 
foiled in the attempt, I every day endeavored to 
turn the lock, which, whether by constantly 
trying I loosened, being probably a very old 
one, or that the door was not locked, but 
fastened tight by time, I know not. To my 
great joy, as I was one day trying th'=^ lock as 
usual, it gave way, and I found myself in this 
so long-desired room. 



BLAKESWARE. 1/ 

" It proved to be a very large library. This 
was indeed a precious discovery. I looked 
round on the books with the greatest delight : I 
thought I would read them every one. I now 
forsook all my favorite haunts and passed all 
my time here. I took down first one book, then 
another. If you never spent whole mornings 
alone in a large library, you cannot conceive the 
pleasure of taking down books in the constant 
hope of finding an entertaining book among 
them ; yet after many days, meeting with noth- 
ing but disappointment, it became less pleasant. 
All the books within my reach were folios of 
the gravest cast. I could understand very little 
that I read in them, and the old dark print and 
the length of the lines made my eyes ache. 

" When I had almost resolved to give up the 
search as fruitless, I perceived a volume lying in 
an obscure corner of the room. I opened it ; it 
was a charming print ; the letters were almost 
as large as the type of the family Bible. In the 
first page I looked into I saw the name of my 
favorite Ishmael, whose face I knew so well * 
from the tapestry and whose history I had often 
read in the Bible. I sat myself down to read 
this book with the greatest eagerness. The 
title of it was Makometanism Explained. ... A 
great many of the leaves were torn out, but 
enough remained to make me imagine that Ish- 



1 8 MARY LAMB. 

mael was the true son of Abraham. I read here 
that the true descendants of Abraham were 
known by a Hght which streamed from the mid- 
dle of their foreheads. It said that Ishmael's 
father and mother first saw this light streaming 
from his forehead as he was lying asleep in the 
cradle. I was very sorry so many of the leaves 
were torn out, for it was as entertaining as a 
fairy tale. I used to read the history of Ishmael 
and then go and look at him in the tapestry, and 
then read his history again. When I had 
almost learned the history of Ishmael by heart 
I read the rest of the book, and then I came to 
the history of Mahomet, who was there said to 
be the last descendant of Abraham, 

"If Ishmael had engaged so much of my 
thoughts, how much more so must Mahomet } 
His history was full of nothing but wonders 
from beginning to end. The book said that 
those who believed all the wonderful stories 
which w.ere related of Mahomet were called 
Mahometans and True Believers ; I concluded 
that I must be a Mahom.etan, for I believed 
every word I read. 

"At length I met with something which I 
also believed, though I trembled as I read it. 
This was, that after we are dead v/e are to pass 
over a narrow bridge which crosses a bottomless 
gulf. The bridge was described to be no wider 



BLAKESWARE. 19 

than a silken thread, and it is said that all who 
were not Mahometans would slip on one side of 
this bridge and drop into the tremendous gulf 
that had no bottom. I considered myself as a 
Mahometan, yet I was perfectly giddy whenever 
I thought of passing over this bridge. One day, 
seeing the old lady totter across the room, a 
sudden terror seized me, for I thought how 
would she ever be able to get over the bridge t 
Then, too, it was that I first recollected that my 
mother would also be in imminent danger ; for 
I imagined she had never heard the name of 
Mahomet, because I foolishly conjectured this 
book had been locked up for ages in the library 
and was utterly unknown to the rest of the 
world. 

*'A11 my desire was now to tell them the dis- 
covery I had made; for, I thought, when they 
knew of the existence of Mahometanism Ex- 
plained they would read it and become Mahom- 
etans to insure themselves a safe passage over 
the silken bridge. But it wanted more courage 
than I possessed to break the matter to my in- 
tended converts ; I must acknowledge .that I 
had been reading without leave ; and the habit 
of never speaking or being spoken to considera- 
bly increased the difficulty. 

*'My anxiety on this subject threw me into a 
fever. I was so ill that my mother thought it 



20 MARY LAMB, 

necessary to sleep in the same room with me. 
In the middle of the night I could not resist the 
strong desire I felt to tell her what preyed so 
much on my mind. 

" I awoke her out of a sound sleep and begged 
she would be so kind as to be a Mahometan. She 
was very much alarmed, for she thought I was 
delirious, which I believe I was : for I tried to 
explain the reason of my request, but it was in 
such an incoherent manner that she could not 
at all comprehend what I was talking about. 
The next day a physician was sent for, and he 
discovered, by several questions that he put to 
me, that I had read myself into a fever. He 
gave me medicines and ordered me to be kept 
very quiet, and said he hoped in a few days I 
should be very well ; but as it was a new case 
to him, he never having attended a little Ma- 
hometan before, if any lowness continued after 
he had removed the fever he would, with my 
mother's permission, take me home with him to 
study this extraordinary case at his leisure ; and 
added that he could then hold a consultation with 
his wife, who was often very useful to him in pre- 
scribing remedies for the maladies of his younger 
patients." 

In the sequel, this sensible and kindly doctor 
takes his little patient home, and restores her 
by giving her child-like, wholesome pleasures 



GRANDMOTHER FIELD. 21 

and rational sympathy. I fear that this only 
shadowed forth the wise tenderness with which 
Mary Lamb would have treated such a child 
rather than what befell herself ; and that with 
the cruelty of ignorance Mary's mother and 
grandmother suffered her young spirit to do 
battle still, in silence and inward solitariness, 
with the phantoms imagination conjured up in 
her too-sensitive brain. " Polly, what are those 
poor, crazy, moythered brains of yours thinking 
always } " was worthy Mrs. Field's way of en- 
deavoring to win the confidence of the thought- 
ful, suffering child. The words in the story "my 
mother almost wholly discontinued talking to 
me," *' I scarcely ever heard a word addressed to 
me from morning to night," have a ring of truth, 
of bitter experience in them, which makes the 
heart ache. Yet it was no result of sullenness 
on either side; least of all did it breed. any ill 
feeling on Mary's. . It was simple stupidity, 
lack of insight or sympathy in the elders ; and 
on hers was repaid by the sweetest affection, 
and, in after years, by a self-sacrificing devotion 
which, carried at last far beyond her strength, 
led to the great calamity of her life. Grand- 
mother Field was a fine old character, however, 
as the reader of Elia well knows. She had 

A mounting spirit, one that entertained 
Scorn of base action, deed dishonorable 
Or aught unseemly. 



22 MARY LAMB. 

Like her daughter, Mrs. Lamb, she had been 
a handsome, stately woman in her prime, and 
when bent with age and pain (for she suffered 
with a cruel malady), cheerful patience and for- 
titude gave her dignity of another and higher 
kind. But, like her daughter, she seems to 
have been wanting in those finer elements of 
tenderness and sympathy which were of vital 
consequence in the rearing up of a child smitten 
like Mary with a hereditary tendency to madness. 



CHAPTER II. 



Birth of Charles. — Coleridge. — Domestic Toils and 

leir Tragic Culminatio 

to and from Coleridge. 



Trials. — Their Tragic Culmination. — Letters 



*&* 



X 1775 -1 796. — ^t. 11-32. 
On the loth of February, 1775, arrived a new 
member into the household group in Crown 
Office Row — Charles, the child of his father's 
old age, the ''weakly but very pretty babe" who 
was to prove their strong ^support. And now 
Mary was no longer a lonely girl. She was just 
old enough to be trusted to nurse and tend the 
baby, and she became a mother to it. In after- 
life she spoke of the comfort, the wholesome, 
curative influence upon her young troubled 
mind, which this devotion to Charles in his in- 
fancy brought with it. And as he grew older 
rich was her reward ; for he repaid the debt 
with a love half filial, half fraternal, than which 
no human tie was ever stronger or more sub- 
limely adequate to the strain of a terrible emer- 
gency. As his young mind unfolded he found 
in her intelligence and love the same genial, fos- 



24 MAJ^V LAMB. 

tering influences that had cherished his feeble 
frame into health and strength. It was with 
his little hand in hers that he first trod the 
Temple gardens, and spelled out the inscriptions 
on the sun-dials and on the tomb-stones in the 
old burying-ground, and wondered, finding only 
lists of the virtues, " where all the naughty 
people were buried?" Like Mary, his dispo- 
sition was so different from that of his gay, 
pleasure-loving parents that they but ill under- 
stood '' and gave themselves little trouble about 
him," which also tended to draw brother and 
sister closer together. There are no other rec- 
ords of Mary's girlhood than such as may be 
gathered from the story of her brother's early 
life ; of how, when he was five and she was fif- 
teen, she came near to losing him from small- 
pox. Aunt Hetty grieving over him, *'the only 
thing in the world she loved," as she was wont 
to say, with a mother's tears. And how, three 
years later (in 1782), she had to give up his 
daily companionship and see him, now grown a 
handsome#boy with " crisply curling black hair, 
clear brown complexion, aquiline, slightly Jew- 
ish cast of features, winning smile, and glitter- 
ing, restless eyCvS," equipped as a Christ's Hos- 
pital boy, and, with Aunt Hetty, to 

... peruse him round and round, 
And hardly know \y\vcx in his yellow coats, 
Red leathern bel|: arid gown of rysset blue. 



THE LITTLE BROTHER. 25 

Coleridge was already a Blue Coat boy, but 
older and too high above Charles in the school 
for comradeship then. To Lamb, with home 
close at hand, it was a happy time ; but Coler- 
idge, homeless and friendless in the great city, 
had no mitigations of the rough Spartan disci- 
pline which prevailed ; and the weekly whole 
holidays when, turned adrift in the streets from 
morn till night, he had nothing but a crust of 
bread in his pockets, and no resource but to be- 
guile the pangs of hunger in summer with hours 
of bathing in the New River, and in winter 
with furtive hanging round book-stalls, wrought 
permanent harm to his fine-strung organization. 
Nor did the gentleness of his disposition or the 
brilliancy of his powers save him from the 
birch-loving brutalities of old Boyer, who was 
wont to add an extra stripe *' because he was so 
ugly." 

In the Lamb household the domestic outlook 
grew dark as soon as Mary was grown up, for 
her father's faculties and her mother's health 
failed early ; and when, in his fifteenth year 
Charles left Christ's Hospital, it was already 
needful for him to take up the burthens of a 
man on his young shoulders ; and for Mary not 
only to make head against sickness, helpless- 
ness, old age, with its attendant exigencies, but 
to add to the now straitened means by taking 
in millinery work. 



26 MARY LAMB. 

For eleven years, as she has told us, she 
maintained herself by the needle ; from the age 
of twenty-one to thirty-two, that is. It was 
not in poor old Aunt Hetty's nature to be help- 
ful either. ** She was from morning till night 
poring over good books and devotional exer- 
cises. . . . The only secular employment I 
remember to have seen her engaged in was the 
splitting of French beans and dropping them 
into a basin of fair water," says Elia. Happily 
a clerkship in the South Sea House, where his 
brother already was, enabled Charles to main- 
tain his parents, and a better post in the India 
House was obtained two years afterwards. Nor 
were there wanting snatches of pleasant holi- 
day, sometimes shared by Mary. 0£ one, a 
visit to the sea, there is a beautiful reminis- 
cence in The Old Margate Hoy, written more 
than thirty years afterwards. "It was our first 
sea-side experiment," he says, *' and many cir- 
cumstances combined to make it the most agree- 
able holiday of my life. We had neither of us 
seen the sea" (he was fifteen and Mary. twenty- 
six), " and we had never been from home so 
long together in company." The disappoint- 
ment they both felt at the first sight of the sea 
he explains with one of his subtle and profound 
suggestions. " Is it not," . . . says he, 
"that we had expected to behold (absurdly I 



TOILS AND TRIALS. 2/ 

grant, but by the law of imagination inevitably) 
not a definite object compassable by the eye, 
but all the sea at once^ the commensurate antag- 
onist of the earth ? Whereas the eye can take 
in a 'slip of salt water.'" The whole passage 
is one of Elia's finest. 

Then Coleridge, too, who had remained two 
years longer at Christ's Hospital than Lamb, 
and after he went up to Cambridge in 1791, 
continued to pay frequent visits to London, 
spent many a glorious evening, not only those 
memorable ones with Charles in the parlor of 
the " Salutation and Cat," but in his home ; and 
was not slow to discover Mary's fine qualities 
and to take her into his brotherly heart, as a 
little poem, written so early as 1794, to cheer 
his friend during a serious illness of hers, testi- 
fies : — 

Cheerily, dear Charles ! 
Thou thy best friend shalt cherish many a year, 
Such warm presages feel I of high hope. 
For not uninterested the dear maid 
I've viewed — her soul affectionate yet wise, 
Her polished wit as mild as lambent glories 
That play around a sainted infant's head. 

The year 1795 witnessed changes for all. The 
father, now wholly in his dotage, was pensioned 
off by Mr. Salt, and the family had to exchange 
their old home in the Temple for straitened 



28 MARY LAMB. 

lodgings in Little Queen street, Holborn (the 
site of which and of the adjoining housei is now 
occupied by Trinity Church). Coleridge, too, 
had left Cambridge and was at Bristol, drawn 
thither by his newly-formed friendship with 
Southey, lecturing, writing, dreaming of his 
ideal Pantisocracy on the banks of the Susque- 
hannah, and love-making. The love-making 
ended in marriage the autumn of that same 
year. Meanwhile Lamb, too, was first tasting 

the joys and sorrows of love. Alice W 

lingers but as a shadow in the records of his 
life : the passion, however, was real enough and 
took deep hold of him, conspiring with the cares 
and trials of home-life, unrelieved now by the 
solace of Coleridge's society, to give a fatal stim- 
ulus to the germs of brain-disease, which were 
part of the family heritage, and for six weeks he 
was in a mad -house. "In your absence," he 
tells his friend afterwards, "the tide of melan- 
choly rushed in and did its worst mischief by 
overwhelming my reason." Who can doubt the 
memory of this attack strengthened the bond of 
sympathy between Mary and himself, and gave 
him a fellow-feeling for her no amount of affec- 
tion alone could have realized } As in her case, 
too, the disordered took the form of a great 
heightening and intensifying of the imaginative 
faculty. " I look back on it at times," wrote he 



TRAGIC CULMINATION. 29 

after his recovery, '' with a gloomy kind of 
envy ; for while it lasted I had many, many 
hours of pure happiness. Dream not, Coleridge, ' 
of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness 
of fancy till you have gone mad. . . The 
sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry, but 
you will be curious to read it when I tell you it 
was written in my prison-house in one of my 
lucid intervals : — 

TO MY SISTER. 

If from my lips some angry accents fell, 

Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, 

'Twas but the error of a sickly mind 

And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well 

And waters clear of Reason ; and for me 

Let this my verse the poor atonement be — 

My verse, which thou to praise wert e'er inclined 

Too highly, and with a partial eye to see 

No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show 

Kindest affection; and would oft-times lend 

An ear to the desponding love-sick lay. 

Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay 

But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, 

Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend. 

No sooner was Charles restored to himself 
than the elder brother, John, met with a serious 
accident ; and though whilst in health he had 
carried himself and his earnings to more com- 
fortable quarters, he did not now fail to return 
and be nursed with anxious solicitude by his 



30 MARY LAMB, 

brother and sister. This was the last ounce. 
Mary, worn out with years of nightly as well as 
daily attendance upon her mother, who was now 
wholly deprived of the use of her limbs, and 
harassed by a close application to needlework to 
help her, in which she had been obliged to take 
a young apprentice, was at last strained beyond 
the utmost pitch of physical endurance, ''worn 
down to a state of extreme nervous misery." 
About the middle of September, she being then 
thirty -two years old, her family observed some 
symptoms of insanity in her, which had so much 
increased by the 2ist that her brother early in 
the morning went to Dr. Pitcairn, who, unhap- 
pily, was out. On the afternoon of that day, 
seized with a sudden attack of frenzy, she 
snatched a knife from the table and pursued the 
young apprentice round the room, when her 
mother, interposing, received a fatal stab and 
died instantly. Mary was totally unconscious 
of what she had done ; Aunt Hetty fainted with 
terror ; the father was too feeble in mind for 
any but a confused and transient impression. It 
was Charles alone who confronted all the anguish 
and horror of the scene. With the stern brevity 
of deep emotion he wrote to Coleridge five days 
afterwards : — 

"My poor, dear, dearest sister, in a fit of 
insanity, has been the death of her own mother. 



TRAGIC CULMINATION. 3 1 

I was at hand only time enough to snatch the 
knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a 
mad-house, from whence I fear she must be 
moved to a hospital. God has preserved to me 
my senses ; I eat, and drink, and sleep, and have 
my judgment, I believe, very sound. My poor 
father was slightly wounded, and I am left to 
take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris of 
the Blue Coat School has been very kind to us, 
and we have no other friend ; but,^ thank God, I 
am very calm and composed, and able to do the 
best that remains to do. Write as religious a 
letter as possible, but no mention of what is gone 
and done with. With me * the former things 
are passed away,' and I have something more to 
do than toJeel. God Almighty have us all in 
His keeping! Mention nothing of poetry. I 
have destroyed every vestige of past vanities of 
that kind. . . Your own judgment will con- 
vince you not to take any notice of this yet to 
your dear wife. You look after your family ; I 
have my reason and strength left to take care of 
mine. I charge you, don't think of coming to 
see me. Write. I will not see you if you come. 
God Almighty love you and all of us ! " 

Coleridge responded to this appeal for sym- 
pathy and comfort by the following — the only 
letter of his to Lamb which has been pre- 
served : — 



32 MARY LAMB. 

"Your letter, my friend, struck me with a 
mighty horror. It rushed upon me and stupefied 
my feeUngs. You bid me write you a reUgious 
letter ; I am not a man who would attempt to 
insult the greatness of your anguish by any 
other consolation. Heaven knows that in the 
easiest fortunes there is much dissatisfaction 
and weariness of spirit ; much that calls for the 
w exercise of patience and resignation ; but in 
■ storms like these, that shake the dwelling and 
make the heart tremble, there is no middle way 
between despair and the yielding up of the 
whole spirit to the guidance of faith. And 
surely it is a matter of joy that your faith in 
Jesus has been preserved ; the Comforter that 
should relieve you is not far from you. But as 
you are a Christian, in the name of that Saviour 
who was filled with bitterness and made drunken 
with wormwood, I conj ure you to have recourse 
in frequent prayer to ' his God and your God,' 
the God of mercies and Father of all comfort. 
Your poor father is, I hope, almost senseless of 
the calamity ; the unconscious instrument of 
Divine Providence knows it not, and your 
mother is in Heaven. It is sweet to be roused 
from a frightful dream by the song of birds and 
the gladsome rays of the morning. Ah, how 
infinitely more sweet to be awakened from the 
blackness and amazement of a sudden horror by 



LETTER FROM COLERIDGE, 33 

the glories of God manifest, and the hallelujahs 
of angels ! 

"As to what regards yourself, I approve alto- 
gether of your abandoning what you justly call 
vanities. I look upon you as a man called by 
sorrow and anguish and a strange desolation of 
hopes into quietness, and a soul set apart and 
y made peculiar to God ; we cannot arrive at any 
portion of heavenly bliss without, in some 
measure, imitating Christ. And they arrive at 
the largest inheritance who imitate the most 
difficult parts of his character, and, bowed down 
and crushed under foot, cry, in fullness of faith, 
* Father, Thy will be done.' 

" I wish above measure to have you for a 
little while here ; no visitants shall blow on the 
nakedness of your feelings ; you shall be quiet, 
that your spirit may be healed. I see no possi- 
ble objection, unless your father's helplessness 
prevent you and unless you are necessary to 
him. If this be not the case, I charge you 
write me that you will come. 

" I charge you, my dearest friend, not to dare 
to encourage gloom or despair ; you are a tem- 
porary sharer in human miseries, that you may 
be an eternal partaker of the divine nature. I 
charge you, if by any means it be possible, 
come to me." 

How the storm was weathered, with what 



34 MARY LAMB. 

mingled fortitude and sweetness Lamb sustained 
the wrecked household and rescued his sister, 
when reason returned, from the living death of 
perpetual confinement in a mad-house, must be 
read in the answer to Coleridge : — 

** Your letter was an inestimable treasure to 
me. It will be a comfort to you, I know, to 
know that our prospects are somewhat brighter. 
My poor, dear, dearest sister, the unhappy and 
unconscious instrument of the Almighty's 
judgment on our house, is restored to her 
senses ; to a dreadful sense and recollection of 
what has passed, awful to her mind, and im- 
pressive (as it must be to the end of life), but 
tempered with religious resignation and the 
reasonings of a sound judgment, which in this 
early stage knows »how to distinguish between 
a deed committed in a transient fit of frenzy 
and the terrible guilt of a mother's murder. I 
have seen her. I found her this morning, calm 
and serene ; far, very far from an indecent, for- 
getful serenity. She has a most affectionate 
and tender concern for what has happened. In- 
deed, from the beginning — frightful and hope- 
less as her disorder seemed — I had confidence 
enough in her strength of mind and religious 
principle to look forward to a time when even 
she might recover tranquillity. God be praised, 
Coleridge ! wonderful as it is to tell, I have 



WEATHERING THE STORM. 35 

never once been otherwise than collected and 
calm ; even on the dreadful day, and in the 
midst of the terrible scene, I preserved a tran- 
quillity which bystanders may have construed 
into indifference ; a tranquillity not of despair. 
Is it folly or sin in me to say that it was a re- 
ligious principle that most supported me ? I 
allow much to other favorable circumstances. 
I felt that I had something else to do than to 
regret. On that first evening my aunt was 
lying insensible — to all appearance like one 
dying ; my father, with his poor forehead plas • 
tered over from a wound he had received from 
a daughter dearly loved by him and who loved 
him no less dearly ; my mother a dead and mur- 
dered corpse in the next room ; yet I was won- 
derfully supported. I closed not my eyes in 
sleep that night, but lay without terrors and 
without despair. I have lost no sleep since. 
I had been long used not to rest in things of 
sense ; had endeavored after a comprehension 
of mind unsatisfied with the ' ignorant present 
time,' and this kept me up. I had the whole 
weight of the family thrown on me ; for my 
brother, little disposed (I speak not without 
tenderness for him) at any time to take care of 
old age and infirmities, had now, with his bad 
leg, an exemption from such duties, and I was 
left alone. 



36 MARY LAMB.- 

"One little incident may serve to make you 
understand my way of managing my mind. 
Within a day or two after the fatal one we 
dressed for dinner a tongue, which we had had 
salted for some weeks in the house. As I 
sat down a feeling like remorse struck me ; this 
tongue poor Mary got for me, and can I partake 
of it now when she is far away 1 A thought oc- 
curred and relieved me ; if I give in to this way 
of feeling, there is not a chair, a room, an ob- 
ject in our rooms, that will not awaken the 
keenest griefs. I must rise above such weak- 
nesses. I hope this was not want of true feel- 
ing. I did not let this carry me, though, too 
far. On the very second day (I date from the 
day of horrors), as is usual in such cases, there 
were a matter of twenty people, I do think, sup- 
ping in our room ; they prevailed on me to eat 
with them (for to eat I never refused). They 
were all making merry in the room ! Som.e had 
come from friendship, some from busy curiosity 
and some from interest. I was going to partake 
with them, when my recollection came that my 
poor dead mother was lying in the next room — 
the very next room ; a mother who, through 
life, wished nothing but her children's welfare. 
Indignation, the rage of grief, something like 
remorse, rushed upon my mind. In :.n agony 
of emotion I found my way mechanically to the 



WEATHERING THE STORM. 37 

adjoining room and fell on my knees by the 
side of her coffin, asking forgiveness of Heaven 
and sometimes of her for forgetting her so 
soon. Tranquillity returned and it was the only 
violent emotion that mastered ine. I think it 
did me good. 

' '^ I mention these things because I hate con- 
cealment and love to give a faithful journal of 
what passes within me. Our friends have been 
very good. Sam Le Grice [an old schoolfellow 
well known to the readers of Lamb], who was 
then in town, was with me the first three or 
four days and was as a brother to me ; gave up 
every hour of his time, to the very hurting of 
his health and spirits, in constant attendance 
and humoring my poor father ; talked with him, 
read to him, played at cribbage with him, (for 
so short is the old man's recollection that he 
was playing at cards as though nothing had hap- 
pened while the coroner's inquest was sitting over 
the way ! ) Samuel wept tenderly when he went 
away, for his mother wrote him a very severe 
letter on his loitering so long in town, and he 
was forced to go. Mr. Norris, of Christ's Hos- 
pital, has been as a father to me ; Mrs. Norris as 
a mother ; though we had few claims on them. 
A gentleman, brother to my godmother, from 
whom we never had right or reason to expect 
any such assistance, sent my father twenty 



38 MARY LAMB. 

pounds ; and to crown all these God's blessings 
to our family at such a time, an old lady, a 
cousin of my father and aunt, a gentlewoman of 
fortune, is to take my aunt and make her com- 
fortable for the short remainder of her days. 
My aunt is recovered and as well as ever, and 
highly pleased at the thought of going, and has 
generously given up the interest of her little 
money (which was formerly paid my father for 
her board) wholly and solely to my sister's use. 
Reckoning this we have. Daddy and I, for our 
two selves and an old maid-servant to look after 
him when I am out, which will be necessary, 
£170 (or ;£i8o rather) a year, out of which we 
can spare ;^50 or £60 at least, for Mary while 
she stays at Islington, where she must and 
shall stay during her father's life, for his and 
her comfort. I know John will make speeches 
about it, but she shall not go into a hospital. 
The good lady of the mad-house, and her 
daughter, an elegant, sweet-behaved young 
lady, love her and are taken with her amazing- 
ly ; and I know from her own mouth she loves 
them and longs to be with them as much. Poor 
thing, they say she was but the other morning 
saying she knew she must go to Bethlem for 
life ; that one of her brothers would have it so, 
but the other would wish it not, but be obliged 
to go with the stream ; that she had often, as 



WEATHERING THE STORM. 39 

she passed Bethlem, thought it likely, * Here it 
may be my fate to end my days/ conscious 
of a certain tlightiness in her poor head often- 
times, and mindful of more than one severe ill- 
ness of that nature before. A legacy of ;^ioo 
which my father will have at Christmas, and 
this ;^20 I mentioned before, with what is in 
the house, will much more than set us clear. If 
my father, an old servant-maid and I can.'t live 
and live comfortably on ;£ 130 or ;^ 120 a year, we 
ought to burn by slow fires, and I almost would 
that Mary might not go into a hospital. Let 
me not leave one unfavorable impression on 
your mind respecting my brother. Since this 
has happened he has been very kind and 
brotherly ; but I fear for his mind : he has 
taken his ease in the world and is not fit to 
struggle with difficulties, nor has he much ac- 
customed himself to throw himself into their 
way, and I know his language is already, 
^ Charles, you must take care of yourself ; you 
must not abridge yourself of a single pleasure 
you have been used to,' etc., etc., and in that 
style of talking. But you, a necessarian, can 
respect a difference of mind and love what is 
amiable in a character not perfect. He has 
been very good, but I fear for his mind. Thank 
God, I can unconnect myself with him, and shall 
manage all my father's moneys in future myself 



40 MARY LAMB. 

if I take charge of Daddy, which poor John has 
not even hinted a wish at any future time even 
to share with me. The lady at this mad-house 
assures me that I may dismiss immediately both 
doctor and apothecary, retaining occasionally a 
composing draught or so for a while ; and there 
is a less expensive establishment in her house, 
where she will not only have a room but a nurse 
to herself for £^o or guineas a year — the out- 
side would be £60. . You know by economy 
how much more even I shall be able to spare 
for her comforts. She will, I fancy, if she 
stays, make one of the family rather than one 
of the patients ; and the old and young ladies I 
like exceedingly and she loves them dearly ; and 
they, as the saying is, take to her very extraor- 
dinarily, if it is extraordinary that people who 
see my sister should love her. Of all the peo- 
ple I ever saw in the world, my poor sister was 
most and thoroughly devoid of the least tincture 
of selfishness. I will enlarge upon her qualities, 
poor, dear, dearest soul, in a future letter for my 
own comfort, for I understand her thoroughly ; 
and, if I mistake not, in the most trying situa- 
tion that a human being can be found in, she 
will be found (I speak not with sufficient humil- 
ity, I fear) ; but humanly and foolishly speaking, 
she will be found, I trust, uniformly g^eat and 
amiable." 



WEATHERING THE STORM. 4 1 

The depth and tenderness of Mary's but half- 
requited love for her mother, and the long 
years of daily and nightly devotion to her which 
had borne witness to it and been the immediate 
cause of the catastrophe, took the sting out of 
her grief and gave her an unfaltering sense of 
innocence. They even shed round her a peace- 
ful atmosphere which veiled from her mind's 
eye the dread scene in all its naked horror, as 
it would seem from Lamb's next letter : — 

"Mary continues serene and cheerful. I 
have not by me a little letter she wrote to me ; 
for though I see her almost every day, yet we 
delight to write to one another, for we can 
see each other but in company with some of 
the people of the house. I have not the letter 
by me, but will quote from memory what she 
wrote in it : 'I have no bad, terrifying dreams. 
At midnight, when I happen to awake, the 
nurse sleeping by the side of me, with the noise 
of the poor mad people around me, I have no 
fear. The spirit of my mother seems to descend 
and smile upon me and bid me live to enjoy the 
life and reason which the Almighty has given 
me. I shall see her again in Heaven; she will 
then understand me better. My grandmother, 
too, will understand me better, and will then say 
no more, as she used to do, 'Polly, what are 



42 MARY LAMB. 

those poor, crazy, moythered brains of yours 
thinking of always ? ' 

And again, in another of her Uttle letters, 
not itself preserved, but which Charles trans- 
lated "almost literally," he tells us, into verse, 
she said : — 

Thou and I, dear friend, 
With filial recognition sweet, shall know 
One day the face of our dear mother in Heaven ; 
And her remembered looks of love shall greet 
With answering looks of love, her placid smiles 
Meet with a^mile as placid, and her hand 
With drops of fondness wet, nor fear repulse. 

And after speaking, in words already quoted, of 
how his mother "had never understood Mary 
right," Lamb continues: — 

" Every act of duty and of love she could pay, 
every kindness (and I speak true when I say to 
the hurting of her health, and most probably in 
a great part to the derangement of her senses), 
through a long course of infirmities and sick- 
ness, she could show her, she ever did." " I 
will some day, as I promised, enlarge to you 
upon my sister's excellences ; 'twill seem like 
exaggeration, but I will do it." 

Although Mary's recovery had been rapid, to 
be permitted to return home was, for the present, 
out of the question ; so, cheered by constant 



WEATHERING THE STORM. 43 

intercourse with Charles, she set herself, with 
characteristic sweetness, to make the best of 
life in a private lunatic asylum. '' I have satis- 
faction," Charles tells his unfailing sympathizer, 
Coleridge, *' in being able to bid you rejoice 
with me in my sister's continued reason and 
composedness of mind. Let us both be thank- 
ful for it. I continue to visit her very fre- 
quently, and the people of the house are vastly 
indulgent to her. She is likely to be as com- 
fortably situated in all respects as those who 
pay twice or thrice the sum. They love her, 
and she loves them and makes herself very 
useful to them. Benevolence sets out on her 
journey with a good heart and puts a good face 
on it, but is apt to limp and grow feeble unless 
she calls in the aid of self-interest by way of 
crutch. In Mary's case, as far as respects those 
she is with, 'tis well that these principles are so 
likely to cooperate. I am rather at a loss some- 
times for books for her ; our reading is somewhat 
confined and we have nearly exhausted our Lon- 
don library. She has her hands too full of work to 
read much, but a little she must read, for read- 
ing was her daily bread." 

So wore away the remaining months of this 
dark year. Perhaps they were loneliest and 
saddest for Charles. There was no one now to 



44 MARY LAMB. 

share with him the care of his old father ; and 
second childhood draws unsparingly on the debt 
of filial affection and gratitude. Cheeringly and 
ungrudgingly did he pay it. His chief solace 
was the correspondence with Coleridge ; and as 
his spirits recovered their tone, the mutual dis- 
cussion of the ^poema which the two friends 
were about to publish, conjointly with some of 
Charles Lloyd's, was resumed. The little vol- 
ume was to be issued by Cottle, of Bristol, early 
in the coming year, 1 797 ; and Lamb was desir- 
ous to seize the occasion of giving his sister an 
unlooked-for pleasure and of consecrating his 
verses by a renouncement and a dedication. 

"I have a dedication in my head," he writes, 
"for my few things, which I want to know if 
you approve of and can insert. I mean to in- 
scribe them to my sister. It will be unexpected 
and it will give her pleasure ; or do you think it 
will look whimsical at all.-* As I have not 
spoken to her about it I can easily reject the 
idea. But there is a monotony in the affections 
which people living together, or, as we do now, 
very frequently seeing each other, are apt to get 
into; a sort of indifference in the expression of 
kindness for each other, which demands that we 
should sometimes call to our aid the trickery of 
surprise. The title-page to stand thus : — 



A DEDICATION. 45 

POEMS 

BY 

CHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDIA HOUSE. 
Motto: — 

This beauty, in the blossom of my youth, 
When my first fire knew no adulterate incense, 
Nor I no way to flatter biit my fondness, 
In the best language my true tongue could tell me, 
And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me, 
I sued and served. Long did I love this lady. 

— Mas singer. 

The Dedication : — 

THE FEW FOLLOWING POEMS, 

CREATURES OF THE FANCY AND THE FEELING, 

IN life's MORE VACANT HOURS, 

PRODUCED, FOR THE MOST PART, BY 

LOVE IN IDLENESS, 

ARE, 

WITH ALL A brother's FONDNESS, 

INSCRIBED TO t 

MARY ANNE LAMB, 

THE author's best FRIEND AND SISTER. 

" This is the pomp and paraphernalia of part- 
ing, v^ith which I take my leave of a passion 
which has reigned so royally, so long, within 
me. Thus, with its trappings of laureateship, I 
fling it off, pleased and satisfied with myself 
that the weakness troubles me no longer. I am 
wedded, Coleridge, to the fortunes of my sister 
and my poor old father. Oh, my friend ! I think 



46 MARY LAMB. 

sometimes, could I recall the days that are past, 
which among them should I choose ? Not 
those merrier days, not the pleasant days of 
hope, not those wanderings with a fair-haired 
maid which I have so often and so feelingly re- 
gretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a mother s 
fondness for her school-boy. What would I give 
to call her back to earth for 07ie day ! — on my 
knees to ask her pardon for all those little as- 
perities of temper which, from time to time, 
have given her gentle spirit pain ! and the day, 
my friend, I trust will come. There will be 

* time enough ' for kind offices of love, if 
Heaven's ' eternal year ' be ours. Hereafter 
her meek spirit shall not reproach me. Oh ! 
my friend, cultivate the filial feelings ! and let 
no man think himself released from the kind 

* charities' of relationship : these shall give him 
peace at last ; these are the best foundation for 
every species of benevolence. I rejoice to hear 
by certain channels that you, my friend, are 
reconciled with all your relations. 'Tis the 
most kindly and natural species of love, and 
we have all the associated train of early feelings 
to secure its strength and perpetuity. " 



CHAPTER III. 

Death of- Aunt Hetty. — Mary removed from the 
Asylum. — Charles Lloyd. — A Visit to Nether 
Stowey, and Introduction to Wordsworth and his 
Sister. — Anniversary of the Mother's Death. — 
Mary ill again. — Estrangement between Lamb and 
Coleridge. — Speedy Reconcilement. 

i797-i8oi. — ^t. 33-37. 

Aunt Hetty did not find her expectations of 
a comfortable home realized under the roof of 
the gentlewoman, who proved herself a typical 
rich relation, and wrote to Charles at the begin- 
ning of the new year that she found her aged 
cousin indolent and mulish, "and that her at- 
tachment to us " (he is telling Coleridge the 
tale, to whom he could unburthen his heart on 
all subjects, sure of sympathy) "is so strong 
that she can never be happy apart. The lady 
with delicate irony remarks that if I am not a 
hypocrite I shall rejoice to receive her again; 
and that it will be a means of making me more 
fond of home to have so dear a friend to come 
home to ! The fact is, she is jealous of my 
aunt's bestowing any kind recollections on us 



48 MARY LAMB. 

while she enjoys the patronage of her roof. 
She says she finds it inconsistent with her own 
' ease and tranquillity ' to keep her any longer ; 
and, in fine, summons me to fetch her home. 
Now, much as I should rejoice to transplant the 
poor old creature from the chilling air of such 
patronage, yet I know how straitened we are 
already, how unable already to answer any de- 
mand which sickness or any extraordinary ex- 
pense may make. I know this ; and all unused 
as I am to struggle with jDerplexities, I am 
somewhat nonplussed, to say no worse." 

Hetty Lamb found a refuge and a welcome 
in the old humble home again. But she 
returned only to die ; and Mary was not there 
to nurse her. She was still in the asylum at' 
Islington, and was indeed herself at this time 
recovering from an attack of scarlet fever, or 
something akin to it. 

Early in January, 1797, Lamb wrote to Col- 
eridge : — " You and Sara are very good to think 
so kindly and favorably of poor Mary. I would 
to God all did so too. But I very much fear 
she must not think of coming home in my 
father's lifetime. It is very hard upon her, but 
our circumstances are peculiar, and we must 
submit to them. God be praised she is so well 
as she is. She bears her situation as one who 
has no right to complain. My poor old aunt, 



DEATH OF AUNT HETTY. 49 

whom you have seen, the kindest, goodest creat- 
ure to me when I was at school, who used to 
toddle there to bring me good things, when I, 
school-boy like, only despised her for it, and 
used to be ashamed to see her come and sit her- 
self down on the old coal-hole steps as you went 
into the old Grammar School, and open her 
apron and bring out her basin with some nice 
thing she had caused to be saved for me, — the 
good old creature is now lying on her death- 
bed. I cannot bear to think on her deplorable 
state. To the shock she received on that our 
evil day, from which she never completely 
recovered, I impute her illness. She says, poor 
thing, she is glad she is come home to die with 
me ; I was always her favorite." 

She lingered a month, and then went to 
occupy 

" . . . the same grave-bed 
Where the dead mother lies. 
Oh, my dear mother ! oh, thou dear dead saint ! 
Where's now that placid face, where oft hath sat 
A mother's smile to think her son should thrive 
In this bad world when she was dead and gone ? 
And where a tear hath sat (take shame, O son !) 
When that same child hath proved himself unkind. 
One parent yet is left — a wretched thing, 
A sad survivor of his buried wife, 
A palsy-smitten, childish, old, old man, 
A semblance most forlorn of what he was." 



so MA/^V LAMB, 

" I Qwn I am thankful that the good creature 
has ended her days of suffering and infirmity," 
says Lamb to Coleridge. '' Good God ! who 
could have foreseen all this but four months 
back ! I had reckoned, in particular, on my 
aunt's living many years ; she was a very hearty 
old woman. . . . But she was a mere skele- 
ton before she died ; looked more like a corpse 
that had lain weeks in the grave than one fresh 
dead." 

" I thank you, from my heart I thank you," 
Charles again wrote to Coleridge, ^'for your 
solicitude about my sister. She is quite well, 
but must not, I fear, come to live with us yet a 
good while. In the first place, because it would 
hurt her and hurt my father for them to be to- 
gether ; secondly, from a regard to the world's 
good report, for I fear tongues will be busy when- 
ever that event takes place. Some have hinted, 
one man has pressed it on me, that she 
should be in perpetual confinement. What she 
hath done to deserve, or the necessity of such a 
hardship, I see not ; do you } " 

At length Lamb determined to grapple, on 
Mary's behalf, with the difficulties and embar- 
rassments of the situation. '' Painful doubts 
were suggested," says Talfourd, " by the authori- 
ties of the parish where the terrible occurrence 
happened, whether they were not bound to 



MARY LEAVES THE ASYLUM. 5 1 

institute proceedings which must have placed 
her for life at the disposition of the Crown, 
especially as no medical assurance could be 
given against the probable recurrence of dan- 
gerous frenzy. But Charles came to her deliv- 
erance ; he satisfied all the parties who had 
power to oppose her release, by his solemn 
engagement that he would take her under his 
care for life ; and he kept his word. Whether 
any communication with the Home Secretary 
occurred before her release, I have been unable 
to ascertain. It was the impression of Mr. 
Lloyd, from whom my own knowledge of the 
circumstances, which the letters did not con- 
tain, was derived, that a communication took 
place, on which a similar pledge was given. At 
all events the result was that she left the asy- 
lum and took up her abode," not with her 
brother yet, but in lodgings near him and her 
father. 

He writes to Coleridge, April 7, 1797 : " Lloyd 
may have told you about my sister. ... If not, 
I have taken her out of her confinement, and 
taken a room for her at Hackney, and spend my 
Sundays, holidays, etc., with her. She boards 
herself. In a little half-year's illness and in such 
an illness, of such a nature and of such conse- 
quences, to get her out into the world again, 
with a prospect of her never being so ill again 



52 MA/^V LAMB. 

— this is to be ranked not among the common 
blessings of Providence. May that merciful 
God make tender my heart and make me as 
thankful as, in my distress, I was earnest in my 
prayers. Congratulate me on an ever-present 
and never-alienable friend like her, and do, do 
insert, if you have not lost, my dedication [to 
Mary]. It will have lost half its value by com- 
ing so late." And of another sonnet to her, 
which he desires to have inserted, he says : " I 
wish to accumulate perpetuating tokens of my 
affection to poor Mary." 

Two events which brightened this sad year 
must not be passed over, though Mary, the 
sharer of all her brother's joys and sorrows, 
had but an indirect participation in them. Just 
when he was most lonely and desolate at the 
close of the fatal year he had written to Coler- 
idge : '' I can only converse with you by letter 
and with the dead in their books. My sister, 
indeed, is all I can wish in a companion ; but 
our spirits are alike poorly, our reading and 
knowledge from the self -same sources, our com- 
munication with the scenes of the world alike 
narrow. Never having kept separate company 
or any 'company' /^^^//2^r — never having read 
separate books and few books together, what 
knowledge have we to convey to each other .'' In 
our little range of duties and connections how 



CHARLES LLOYD. 53 

few sentiments can take place without friends, 
with few books, with a taste for rehgion rather 
than a strong rehgious habit ! We need some 
support, some leading-strings to cheer and direct 
us. You talk very wisely, and be not sparing of 
your advice ; continue to remember us and to 
show us you do remember ; we will take as lively 
an interest in what concerns you and yours. All 
I can add to your happiness will be sympathy; 
you can add to mine more ; you can teach me 
wisdom," 

Quite suddenly, at the beginning of the new 
year, there came to break this solitude Charles 
Lloyd, whose poems were to company Lamb's 
own and Coleridge's in the forthcoming volume : 
a young man of Quaker family who was living 
in close fellowship with that group of poets down 
in Somersetshire, towards whom Lamb's eyes 
and heart were wistfully turned, as afterwards 
were to be those of all lovers of literature. 
How deeply he was moved by this spontaneous 
seeking for his friendship on Lloyd's part, let a 
few lines from one of those early poems which, 
in their earnest simplicity and sincerity, are 
precious autobiographic fragments, tell : — 

Alone, obscure, without a friend, 

A cheerless, solitary thing, 

Why seeks my Lloyd the stranger out ? 

What offering can the stranger bring 



54 MARY LAMB. 

Of social scenes, home-bred delights, 

That him in aught compensate may 

For Stowey's pleasant winter nights, 

For loves and friendships far away ? 
* * * * * * 

For this a gleam of random joy 

Hath flush'd my unaccustom'd cheek. 

And with an o'ercharged, bursting heart 

I feel the thanks I cannot speak. 

O sweet ate all the Muses' lays. 

And sweet the charm of matin bird — 

'Twas long since these estranged ears 

The sweeter voice of friend had heard. 

The next was a yet brighter gleam — a fort- 
night with Coleridge at Nether Stowey and an 
introduction to Wordsworth and his sister Dor- 
othy, forerunner of a life-long friendship, in 
which Mary was soon to share. The visit took 
place in the July of this same year, 1797. The 
prospect of it had dangled tantalizingly before 
Charles' eyes for a year or more ; and nOw at 
last his chiefs at the India House were propi- 
tious, and he wrote : '* May I, can I, shall I come 
so soon .-^ . . . I long, I yearn, with all 
the longings of a child do I desire to see you, 
to come among you, to see the young philoso- 
pher [Hartley, the poet's first child], to thank 
Sara for her last year's invitation in person, to 
read your tragedy, to read over together our 
little book, to breathe fresh air, to revive in me 
vivid images of ' salutation scenery. ' There is 



THE GROUP A T. NETHER STO WE Y. 55 

a sort of sacrilege in my letting such ideas slip 
out of my mind and memory. . . . Here 
I will leave off, for I dislike to fill up this paper 
(which involves a question so connected with 
my heart and soul) with meaner matter, or sub- 
jects to me less interesting. I can talk as I 
can think — nothing else." 

Seldom has fate been kind enough to bring 
together, in those years of early manhood when 
friendships strike their deepest roots, just the 
very men who could give the best help, the 
warmest encouragement to each other's genius, 
whilst they were girding themselves for that 
warfare with the ignorance and dullness of the 
public which every original man has to wage 
for a longer or shorter time. Wordsworth was 
twenty - seven, Coleridge twenty -five. Lamb 
twenty-two. For Wordsworth was to come the 
longest, stiff est battle — fought, however, from 
the vantage ground of pecuniary independence, 
thanks to his simple, frugal habits and to a few 
strokes of good fortune. His aspect in age is 
familiar to the readers of this generation, but 
less so the Wordsworth of the days when the 
Lyrical Ballads were just taking final shape. 
There was already a severe, worn pressure of 
thought about the temples of his high yet some- 
what narrow forehead, and ** his eyes were fires, 
half smouldering, half burning, inspired, super- 



56 MARY LAMB. 

natural, with a fixed acrid gaze, "as if he saw 
something in objects more than the outward 
appearance. " His cheeks were furrowed by- 
strong purpose and feeUng, and there was a 
convulsive inclination to laughter about the 
mouth, a good deal at variance with the solemn, 
stately expression of the rest of his face." 
Dressed in a brown fustian jacket and striped 
pantaloons, adds Hazlitt, who first saw him a 
few months later, he had something of a roll 
and lounge in his gait not unlike his own Peter 
Bell. He talked freely and naturally, with a 
mixture of clear, gushing accents in his voice, a 
deep, guttural intonation and a strong tincture 
of the northern burr, and when he recited one 
of his poems his voice lingered on the ear '' like 
the roll of spent thunder. " 

But who could dazzle and win like Coleridge } 
Who could travel so far and wide through all 
the realms of thought and imagination, and pour 
out the riches he brought back in such free, full, 
melodious speech, with that spontaneous '' utter- 
ancy of heart and soul" which was his unique 
gift, in a voice whose tones were so sweet, ear 
and soul were alike ravished .<* For him the 
fight was not so much with the public, which, 
Orpheus that he was, he could so easily have 
led captive, as with the flesh — weak health, a 
nerveless languor, a feeble will that never could 



THE GRO UP AT NE THER STO WE Y. S7 

combine and" concentrate his forces for any sus- 
tained or methodical effort. Dorothy Words- 
worth has described him as he looked in these 
days : *'At first I thought him very plain — that 
is, for about three minutes. He is pale, thin, 
has a v^ride mouth, thick lips, and not very good 
teeth, longish, loose-growing, half -curling, rough, 
black hair (in both these respects a contrast to 
Wordsworth, who had in his youth beautiful 
teeth and light brown hair) ; but if you hear 
him speak for five minutes you think no more 
of them. His eye is large and full and not very 
dark, but gray ; such an eye as would receive 
from a heavy soul the dullest expression ; but it 
speaks every emotion of his animated mind; it 
has more of the 'poet's eye in a fine frenzy roll- 
ing' than I ever witnessed. He has fine dark 
eyebrows and an overhanging forehead." This 
was the very year that produced The Ancient 
Mariner^ the first part of Christabel, and Kubla 
Khan. 

To Charles Lamb the change from his re- 
stricted, overshadowed life in London — all day 
at a clerk's desk and in the evening a return to 
the Pentonville lodging, with no other inmate 
than his poor old father, Sundays and holidays 
only spent with his sister, — to such companion- 
ship amid such scenes, almost dazed him, like 
stepping from a darkened room into the bril- 



58 MARY LAMB. 

liant sunshine. Before he went he had written : 
" I see nobody. I sit and read, or walk alone and 
hear nothing. I am quite lost to conversation 
from disuse ; and out of the sphere of my little 
family (who, I am thankful, are dearer and dear- 
er to me every day), I see no face that brightens 
up at my approach. My friends are at a distance. 
Worldly hopes are at a low ebb with me, and 
unworldly thoughts are unfamiliar to me, though 
I occasionally indulge in them. Still, I feel a 
calm not unlike content. I fear it is sometimes 
more akin to physical stupidity than to a heaven- 
flowing serenity and peace. If I come to Stowey, 
what conversation can I furnish to compensate 
my friend for those stores of knowledge and of 
fancy, those delightful treasures of wisdom, 
which I know he will open to me "^ But it is 
better to give than to receive ; and I was a very 
patient hearer and docile scholar in our winter 
evening meetings at Mr. May's, was I not, Col- 
eridge.-* What I have owed to thee my heart 
can ne'er forget." 

Perhaps his friends, even Coleridge who knew 
him so well, realized as little as himself what 
was the true mental stature of the "gentle- 
hearted" and "wild-eyed boy," as they called 
him whose opportunities and experience, save 
in the matter of strange calamity, had been so 



DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 59 

narrow compared to their own. The keen edge 
of his discernment as a critic, quick and pierc- 
ing as those quick, piercing, restless eyes of his, 
they knew and prized, yet could hardly, per- 
haps, divine that there were qualities in him 
which would freight his prose for a long voyage 
down the stream of time. But already they 
knew that within that small, spare frame, " thin 
and wiry as an Arab of the desert," there beat 
a heroic heart, fit to meet the stern and painful 
exigencies of his lot ; and that his love for his 
sister was of the same fibre as conscience — '^ a 
supreme embracer of consequences." 

Dorothy Wordsworth was just such a friend 
and comrade to the poet as Mary was to 
Charles, sharing his passionate devotion to 
nature as Mary shared her brother's loves, 
whether for men or books, or for the stir and 
throng of life in the great city. Alike were 
these two women in being, as De Quincey said 
of Dorothy, "the truest, most inevitable, and, 
at the same time, the quickest and readiest in 
sympathy with either joy or sorrow, with laugh- 
ter or with tears, with the realities of life, or 
with the larger realities of the poets." But un- 
like in temperament ; Dorothy ardent, fiery, 
trembling with eager impetuosity that embar- 
rassed her utterance ; Mary gentle, silent or 



6o MARY LAMB. 

deliberate in speech. In after-life there was 
another sad similarity, for Dorothy's reason, 
too, was in the end over-clouded. Coleridge 
has described her as she then was : " She is a 
woman indeed," said he, "in mind, I mean, and 
in heart ; for her person is such that if you ex- 
pected to see a pretty woman you would think 
her ordinary ; if you expected to see an ordi- 
nary woman you would think her pretty ; but her 
manners are simple, ardent and impressive. In 
every motion her innocent soul outbeams so 
brightly that who saw her would say ' guilt was 
a thing impossible with her ; ' her information 
various, her eye watchful in minute observation 
of nature, and her taste a perfect electrometer." 
An accident had lamed Coleridge the very 
morning after Lamb's arrival, so that he was 
unable to share his friend's walks. He turned 
his imprisonment to golden account by writing 
a poem which mirrors for us, as in a still lake, 
the beauty of the Quantock hills and vales 
where they 'were roaming, the scenes amid 
which these great and happy days of youth and 
poetry and friendship were passed. It is the 
very poem in the margin of which, eight and 
thirty years afterwards, Coleridge on his death- 
bed wrote down the sum of his love for Charles 
and Mary Lamb : — 



DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 6 1 

THIS LIME-TREE BOWER MY PRISON. 

Well, they are gone, and here must I remain, 

This lime-tree bower my prison ! I have lost 

Beauties and feelings such as would have been 

Most sweet to my remembrance even when age 

Had dimmed mine eyes to blindness ! They, meanwhile, 

Friends whom I never more may meet again 

On springy heath, along the hill-top edge 

Wander in gladness and wind down, perchance, 

To that still roaring dell of which I told ; 

The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep, 

And only speckled by the mid-day sun ; 

Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock 

Flings arching like a bridge ; — that branchless ash, 

Unsunned and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves 

Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still. 

Fanned by the water-fall ! and there my friends 

Behold the dark green file of long, lank weeds. 

That all at once (a most fantastic sight !) 

Still nod and drip before the dripping edge 

Of the blue clay-stone. 

Now my friends emerge 
Beneath the wide, wide heaven — and view again 
The many-steepled tract magnificent 
Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea, 
With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up 
The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two isles 
Of purple shadow ! Yes ! they wander on 
In gladness all ; but thou, methinks, most glad, 
My gentle-hearted Charles ! for thou hast pined 
And hungered after Nature many a year. 
In the great city pent, winning thy way 
With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain 
And strange calamity ! Ah ! slowly sink 



62 MARY LAMB. 

Behind the western ridge, thou glorious sun ! 
Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb, 
Ye purple heath-flowers ! richlier burn, ye clouds ! 
Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves ! 
And kindle, thou blue ocean ! So my friend, 
Struck with deep joy, may stand, as I have stood, 
Silent with swimming sense ; yea, gazing round 
On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem 
Less gross than bodily ; and of such hues 
As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet He makes 
Spirits perceive His presence. 

****** 

On Lamb's return he wrote in the same mod- 
est vein as before : — 

" I am scarcely yet so reconciled to the loss 
of you or so subsided into my wonted uniformi- 
ty of feeling as to sit calmly down to think of 
you and write. . . . Is the patriot [Thelwall] 
come .-* Are Wordsworth and his sister gone 
yet } I was looking out for John Thelwall all 
the way from Bridgewater, and had I niet him I 
think it would have moved me almost to tears. 
You will oblige me, too, by sending me my 
great-coat, which I left behind in the oblivious 
state the mind is thrown into at parting. Is it 
not ridiculous that I sometimes envy that great- 
coat lingering so cunningly behind ! At pres- 
ent I have none ; so send it me by a Stowey 
wagon if there be such a thing, directing it for 
C. L., No. 45 Chapel street, Pentonville, near 



RETl/RN HOME. 63 

London. But above all, that inscription [of 
Wordsworth's]. It will recall to me the tones 
of all your voices, and with them many a re- 
membered kindness to one who could and can 
repay you all only by the silence of a grateful 
heart. I could not talk much while I was with 
you, but my silence was not sullenness nor, I 
hope, from any bad motive ; but in truth, disuse 
has made me awkward at it. I know I behaved 
myself, particularly at Tom Poole's and at 
Cruikshank's, most like a sulky child ; but com- 
pany and converse are strange to me. It was 
kind in you all to endure me as you did. 

"Are you and your dear Sara — to me also 
very dear because very kind — agreed yet about 
the management of little Hartley 1 And how go 
on the little rogue's teeth .<*" 

The mention of his address in the foregoing 
letter shows that Lamb and his father had al- 
ready quitted Little Queen street. It is proba- 
ble that they did so, indeed, immediately after 
the great tragedy ; to escape not only from the 
painful associations of the spot, but also from 
the cruel curiosity which its terrible notoriety 
must have drawn upon them. The season was 
coming round which could not but renew his 
and Mary's grief and anguish in the recollection 
of that " day of horrors. " " Friday next, Coler- 
idge, " he writes, '* is the day (September 22d) 



64 ' MARY LAMB. 

on which my mother died ; "and in the letter is 
inclosed that beautiful and affecting poem be- 
ginning : — 

Alas ! how am I changed ? Where be the tears, 
The sobs, and forced suspensions of the breath, 
And all the dull desertions of the heart, 
With which I hung o'er my dead mother's corse ? 
Where be the blest subsidings of the storm 
Within ? The sweet resignedness of hope 
Drawn heavenward, and strength of filial love 
In which I bowed me to my Father's will? 

"Tf^ vfr 1^ "Tf: Tpr 

Mary's was a silent grief. But those few 
casual pathetic words written years afterwards 
speak her life-long sorrow, — '' my dear mother, 
who, though you do not know it, is always in 
my poor head and heart. " She continued quiet 
in her lodgings, free from relapse, till toward 
the end of the year. 

On the loth of December Charles wrote in 
bad spirits: — "My teasing lot makes me too 
confused for a clear judgment of things ; too 
selfish for sympathy. . . . My sister is pretty 
well, thank God. We think of you very often. 
God bless you ! Continue to be my correspond- 
ent, and I will strive to fancy that this world 
is not 'all barrenness.' " 

But by Christmas Day she was once, more in 
the asylum. In sad solitude he gave utterance, 
again in verse form, to his overflowing grief 
and love : — 



THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY, 65 

1 am a widow'd thing now thou art gone ! 
Now thou art gone, my own famiHar friend, 
Companion, sister, helpmate, counsellor! 
Alas ! that honor'd mind whose sweet reproof 
And meekest wisdom in times past have smooth'd 
The unfilial harshness of my foolish speech, 
And made me loving to my parents old. 
(Why is this so, ah God ! why is this so ?) 
That honor'd mind becomes a fearful blank. 
Her senses lock'd up, and herself kept out 
From human sight or converse, while so many 
Of the foolish sort are left to roam at large. 
Doing all acts of folly and sin and shame ? 
Thy paths are mystery ! 

Yet I will not think, 
Sweet friend, but we shall one day meet and live 
In quietness and die so, fearing God. 
Or if not^ and these false suggestions be 
A fit of the weak nature, loth to part 
With what it loved so long and held so dear; 
If thou art to be taken and I left 
(More sinning, yet unpunish'd save in thee), 
It is the will of God, and we are clay 
In the potter's hand ; and at the worst are made 
From absolute nothing, vessels of disgrace, 
Till His most righteous purpose wrought in us. 
Our purified spirits find their perfect rest. 

To add to these sorrows Coleridge had, for 
some time, been growing negligent as a corre- 
spondent. So early as April Lamb had written, 
after affectionate inquiries for Hartley, " the 
minute philosopher," and Hartley's mother : 



66 MARY LAMB. 

" Coleridge, I am not trifling, nor are these 
matter-of-fact questions only. You are all very 
dear and precious to me. Do what you will, 
Coleridge ; you may hurt and vex me by your 
silence, but you cannot estrange my heart from 
you all. I cannot scatter friendships like chuck- 
farthings, nor let them drop from mine hand 
like hour-glass sand. I have but two or three 
people in the world to whom I am more than 
indifferent, and I can't afford to whistle them 
off to the winds." 

And again, three months after his return 
from Stowey, he wrote sorrowfully, almost 
plaintively, remonstrating for Lloyd's sake and 
his own : — 

**You use Lloyd very ill, never writing to 
him. I tell you again that his is not a mind 
with which you should play tricks. He de- 
serves more tenderness from you. For myself, 
I must spoil a little passage of Beaumont and 
Fletcher's to adapt it to my feelings : — 

I am prouder 
That I was once your friend, tho' now forgot, 
Than to have had another true to me. 

If you don't write to me now, as I told Lloyd, I 
shall get angry and call you hard names — ' Man- 
chineel ' " (alluding to a passage in a poem of 
Coleridge's, ^Y^^ere he compares a false friend to 



THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY. 67 

the treacherous manchineel tree, * which min- 
gles its own venom with the rain and poisons 
him who rests beneath its shade), ''and I don't 
know what else. I wish you would send me 
my great-coat. The snow and rain season is at 
hand and I have but a wretched old coat, once 
my father's, to keep 'em off, and that is transi- 
tory. 

When time drives flocks from field to fold, 
When ways grow foul and blood gets cold, 

I shall remember where I left my coat. Meet 
emblem wilt thou be, old Winter, of a friend's 
neglect — cold, cold, cold ! " 

But this fresh stroke of adversity, sweeping 
away the fond hope Charles had begun to cher- 
ish that " Mary would never be so ill again," 
roused his friend's sometimes torpid but deep 
and enduring affection for him into action. 
" You have writ me many kind letters, and I 
have answered none of them," says Lamb, on 
the 28th of January, 1798. "I don't deserve 
your attention. An unnatural indifference has 
been creeping on me since my last misfortunes, 
or I should have seized the first opening of a 
correspondence with you. These last afflic- 
tions, Coleridge, have failed to soften and bend 

* Hippomane Nancinella^ one of the Euphorbiacecz, a 
native of South America. 



68 MARY LAMB. 

my will. They found me unprepared. . . . 
I have been very querulous, impatient under 
the rod — full of little jealousies and heart- 
burnings. I had well-nigh quarreled with 
Charles Lloyd ; and for no other reason, I be- 
lieve, than that the good creature did all he 
could to 'make me happy. The truth is, I 
thought he tried to force my mind from its nat- 
ural and proper bent. He continually wished 
me to be from home ; he was drawing mQfrom 
the consideration of my poor dear Mary's situa- 
tion rather than assisting me to gain a proper 
view of it with religious consolations. I wanted 
to be left to the tendency of my own mind, in a 
solitary state which in times past, I knew, had 
led to quietness and a patient bearing of the 
yoke. He was hurt that I was not more con- 
stantly with him ; but he was living with White 
(Jem White, an old school-fellow, author of 
Falstaff's Letters), a man to whom I had never 
been accustomed to impart my dearest feelings, 
though, from long habits of friendliness and 
many a social and good quality, I loved him 
very much. I met company there sometimes, 
indiscriminate company. Any society almost, 
when I am in affliction, is sorely painful to me. 
I seem to breathe more freely, to think more 
collectedly, to feel more properly and calmly 
when alone. All these things the good creat- 



A BRIEF ESTRANGEMENT. 69 

ure did with the kindest intentions in the 
world, but they produced in me nothing but 
soreness and discontent. I became, as he com- 
plained, * jaundiced' towards him, . . . but 
he has forgiven me ; and his smile, I hope, will 
draw all such humors from me. I am recover- 
ing, God be praised for it, a healthiness of 
mind, something like calmness ; but I want 
more religion. . . . Mary is recovering ; but 
I see no opening yet of a situation for her. 
Your invitation went to my very heart ; but you 
have a power of exciting interest, of leading all 
hearts captive, too forcible to admit of Mary's 
being with you. I consider her as perpetually 
on the brink of madness. I think you would 
almost make her dance within an inch of the 
precipice : she must be with duller fancies and 
cooler intellects. I know a young man of this 
description, who has suited her these twenty 
years, and may live to do so still, if we are one 
day restored to each other. " 

But the clouds gathered up again between the 
friends, generated partly by a kind of intel- 
lectual arrogance whereof Coleridge afterwards 
accused himself (he was often but too self-de- 
preciatory in after-life), which, in spite of Lamb's 
generous and unbounded admiration for his 
friend, did at last both irritate and hurt him ; 
still more by the influence of Lloyd, who, him- 



70 MARY LAMB. 

self slighted, as he fancied, and full of a morbid 
sensitiveness *' bordering on derangement," 
sometimes, indeed, overleaping that border, 
worked upon Lamb's soreness of feeling till a 
brief estrangement ensued. Lamb had not yet 
learned to be on his guard with Lloyd. Years 
afterwards he wrote of him to Coleridge : " He 
is a sad tattler ; but this is under the rose. 
Twenty years ago he estranged one friend from 
me quite, whom I have been regretting, but 
never could regain since. He almost alienated 
you also from me or me from you, I don't know 
which : but that breach is closed. The ' dreary 
sea' is filled up. He has lately been at work 
' telling again,' as they call it, a most gratuitous 
piece of mischief, and has caused a coolness be- 
twixt me and (not a friend but) an intimate ac- 
quaintance. I suspect, also, he saps Manning's 
faith in me, who am to Manning more than an 
acquaintance." 

The breach was closed, indeed, almost as soon 
as opened. But Coleridge went away to Ger- 
many for fourteen months and the correspond- 
ence was meanwhile suspended. When it was 
resumed Lamb was, in some respects, an altered 
man ; he was passing from youth to maturity, 
enlarging the circle of his acquaintance and 
entering on more or less continuous literary 
work ; whilst, on the other hand, the weaknesses 



A BRIEF ESTRANGEMENT. 7 1 

which accompanied the splendid endowments of 
his friend were becoming but too plainly appar- 
ent ; and though they never for a moment les- 
sened Lamb's affection, nay, with his fine hu- 
manity seemed to give rather an added tender- 
ness to it, there was inevitably a less deferen- 
tial, a more humorous and playful tone on his 
side in their intercourse. " Bless you, old soph- 
ist, who, next to human nature, taught me all 
the corruption I was capable of knowing," says 
he to the poet-philosopher by and by. And the 
weak side of his friend's style, too, received an 
occasional sly thrust ; as, for instance, when on 
forwarding him some books he writes in 1800: 
"I detained Statins wilfully, out of a reverent 
regard to your style. Statins^ they tell me, is 
turgid." 



CHAPTER IV. 

Death of the Father. — Mary comes Home to live. — A 
Removal. — First Verses. — A Literary Tea-party. — 
Another move. — Friends increase. 

1 799-1 800. — JEt. 35-36. 

The feeble flame of life in Lamb's father flick- 
ered on for two years and a half after his wife's 
death. He was laid to rest at last beside her 
and his sister Hetty in the churchyard of St. 
Andrew's, Holborn (now swept away in the 
building of the Holborn Viaduct), on the 13th 
of April, 1799, and Mary came home once more. 
There is no mention of either fact in Lamb's 
letters ; for Coleridge was away in Germany ; 
and with Southey, who was almost the sole cor- 
respondent of this year, the tie was purely in- 
tellectual and never even in that kind a close 
one. A significant allusion to Mary there is, 
however, in a letter to him dated May 20: — 
"Mary was never in better health or spirits 
than now." But neither the happiness of shar- 
ing Charles' home again nor anything else could 
save her from the constant recurrence ot her 
malady ; nor, in these early days, from the pain- 



MARY COMES' HOME TO LIVE. 73 

f ul notoriety of what had befallen her ; and they 
were soon regarded as unwelcome inmates in the 
Chapel street lodgings. Early in 1800 he tells 
Coleridge : "■ Soon after I wrote to you last an 
offer was made me by Gutch (you must remem- 
ber him at Christ's) to come and lodge with him 
at his house in Southampton Buildings, Chan- 
cery Lane. This was a very comfortable offer 
to me, the rooms being at a reasonable rent and 
including the use of an old servant, besides 
being infinitely preferable to ordinary lodgings 
i7i our case, as you must perceive. As Gutch 
knew all our story and the perpetual liability to 
a recurrence in my sister's disorder, probably to 
the end of her life, I certainly think the offer 
very generous and very friendly. I have got" 
three rooms (including servant) under ;£34 a 
year. Here I soon found myself at home, and 
here, in six weeks after, Mary was well enough 
to join me. So we are once more settled. I 
am afraid we are not placed out of the reach of 
future interruptions ; but I am determined to 
take what snatches of pleasure we can, between 
the acts of our distressful drama. I have passed 
two days at Oxford, on a visit, which I have 
long put-off, to Gutch's family. The sight of 
the Bodleian Library, and, above all, a fine bust 
of Bishop Taylor at All Souls', were particularly 
gratifying to me. Unluckily it was not a fam- 



74 MARY LAMB. 

ily where I could take Mary with me, and I 
am afraid there is something of dishonesty in 
any pleasure I take without her. She never 
goes anywhere." And to Manning: "It is a 
great object for me to live in town." [Penton- 
ville then too much of a gossiping country sub- 
urb !] " We can be nowhere private except in 
the midst of London." 

By the summer Mary was not only quite well, 
but making a first essay in verse — the theme a 
playful mockery of her brother's boyish love for 
a pictured beauty at Blakesware described in 
his essay, — "that beauty with the cool, blue, 
pastoral drapery and a lamb, that hung next the 
great bay window, with the bright yellow 

H shire hair, and eye of watchet hue — so 

like my Alice ! I am persuaded she was a true 
Elia — Mildred Elia, I take it. From her and 
from my passion for her — for I first learned 
love from a picture — Bridget took the hint of 
those pretty whimsical lines which thou mayest 
see if haply thou hast never seen them, reader, 
in the margin. But my Mildred grew not old 
like the imaginary Helen." 

With brotherly pride he sends them to Col- 
eridge : " How do you like this little epigram ? 
It is not my writing, nor had I any finger in it. 
If you concur with me in thinking it very ele- 
gant and very original, I shall be tempted to 



MARY'S riRST VERSES. 75 

name the author to you. I will just hint that it 
is almost or quite a first attempt" : — 

HELEN. . 

High-born Helen, round your dwelling 
These twenty years I've jDaced in vain ; 

Haughty beauty, thy lover's duty 
Hath been to glory in his pain. 

High-born Helen, proudly telling 

Stories of thy cold disdain ; 
I starve, I die, now you comply. 

And I no longer can complain. 

These twenty years I've lived on tears, 

Dwelling forever on a frown ; 
On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread; 

I perish, now you kind are grown. 

Can I who loved my beloved. 

But for the scorn " was in her eye " — 

Can I be moved for my beloved. 

When she "returns me sigh for sigh.'"' 

In stately pride, by my bed-side 

High-born Helen's portrait 's hung; 

Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays 
Are nightly to the portrait sung. 

So that I weep, nor ever sleep. 
Complaining all night long to her. 

Helen grown old, no longer cold, 
Said, " You to all men I prefer." 



76 MARY LAMB. 

Lamb inserted this and another by Mary, a 
serious and tender little poem, the Dialogue 
between a Mother and Child, beginning : — 

O lady, lay your costly robes aside ; 

No longer may you glory in your pride, — 

in the first collected edition of his works. 

Mary now began also to go out with her 
brother, and the last record of this year in the 
Coleridge correspondence discloses them at a 
literary tea-party, not in the character of lions, 
but only as friends of a lion — Coleridge — who 
had already become, in his frequent visits to 
town, the prey of some third-rate admiring lit- 
erary ladies, notably of a certain Miss Wesley 
(niece of John Wesley) and of her friend, Miss 
Benger, authoress of 2^ Life of Tobin, etc. 

"You blame us for giving your direction to 
Miss Wesley," says the letter; "the woman has 
been ten times after us about it and we gave it 
her at last, under the idea that no further harm 
would ensue, but that she would once write to 
you, and you would bite your lips and forget to 
answer it, and so it would end. You read us a 
dismal homily upon 'Realities.' We know quite 
as well as you do what are shadows and what 
are realities. You, for instance, when you are 
over your fourth or fifth jorum, chirping about 
old school occurrences, are the best of realities. 



A LITERARY TEA-PARTY. 77 

Shadows are cold, thin things that have no 
warmth or grasp in them. Miss Wesley and 
her friend, and a tribe of authoresses that come 
after you here daily, and, in defect of you, hive 
and cluster upon us, are the shadows. You en- 
couraged that mopsey Miss Wesley to dance 
after you in the hope of having her nonsense 
put into a nonsensical anthology. We have 
pretty well shaken her off by that simple expe- 
dient of referring her to you, but there are 
more burs in the wind. I came home t' other 
day from business, hungry as a hunter, to din- 
ner, with nothing, I am sure, of the author but 
hunger about me; and whom found I closeted 
with Mary but a friend of this Miss Wesley, 
one Miss Benjay or Benje. . . . I just came in 
time enough, I believe, luckily to prevent them 
from exchanging vows of eternal friendship. It 
seems she is one of your authoresses that you 
first foster and then upbraid us with. But I 
forgive you. 'The rogue has given me potions 
to make me love him.' Well, go she would not 
nor step a step over our threshold till we had 
promised to come to drink tea with her next 
night. I had never seen her before and could 
not tell who the devil it was that was so famil- 
iar. We went, however, not to be impolite. 
Her lodgings are up two pair of stairs in East 
street. Tea and coffee and macaroons — a kind 



78 MARY LAMB. 

« 

of cake — much love. We sat down. Presently 
Miss Benjay broke the silence by declaring her- 
self quite of a different opinion from U Israeli^ 
who supposes the differences of human intellect 
to be the mere effect of organization. She 
begged • to know my opinion. I attempted 
to carry it off with a pun upon organ, but 
that went off very flat. She immediately con- 
ceived a very low opinion of my metaphysics; 
and turning round to Mary, put some question 
to her in French, possibly having heard that 
neither Mary nor I understood French. The 
explanation that took place occasioned some 
embarrassment and much wondering. She then 
fell into an insulting conversation about the 
comparative genius and merits of all modern 
languages, and concluded with asserting that 
the Saxon was esteemed the purest dialect in 
Germany. From thence she passed into the 
subject of poetry, where I, who had hitherto sat 
mute and a hearer only, humbly hoped I might 
now put in a word to some advantage, seeing 
that it was my own trade in a manner. But I 
was stopped by a round assertion that no good 
poetry had appeared since Dr. Johnson's time. 
It seems the doctor has suppressed many hope- 
ful geniuses that way, by the severity of his 
critical strictures in his Lives of the Poets, I 
here ventured to question the fact and was be- 



A LITERARY TEA-PARTY. 79 

ginning to appeal to names^ but I was assured 
*it was certainly the case.' Then we discussed 
Miss More's [Hannah] book on education, which 
I had never read. It seems Dr. Gregory, an- 
other of Miss Benjay's friends, had found fault 
with one of Miss More's metaphors. Miss More 
has been at some pains to vindicate herself, in 
the opinion of Miss Benjay not without success. 
It seems the doctor is invariably against the 
use of broken or mixed metaphor, which he 
reprobates, against the authority of Shakes- 
peare himself. We next discussed the question 
whether Pope was a poet. I find Dr. Gregory is 
of opinion he was not, though Miss Seward 
does not at all concur with him in this. We 
then sat upon the comparative merits of the 
ten translations of Pizarro, and Miss Benjay or 
Benje advised Mary to take two of them home 
(she thought it might afford her some pleasure 
to compare them verbatim), which we declined. 
It being now nine o'clock, wine and macaroons 
were again served round, and we parted with a 
promise to go again next week and meet the 
Miss Porters, who, it seems, have heard much 
of Mr. Coleridge and wish to see tts because 
we are his friends. I have been preparing for 
the occasion. I crowd cotton in my ears. I 
read all the reviews and magazines of the past 
month against the dreadful meeting, and I hope 



8o MARY LAMB. 

by these means to cut a tolerable second-rate 
figure. 

" . . . . Take no thought about your 
proof-sheets ; they shall be done as if Woodfall 
himself did them. Pray send us word of Mrs. 
Coleridge and little David Hartley, your little 
reality. Farewell, dear Substance. Take no 
umbrage at anything I have written. 
" I am, and will be, 

" Yours ever in sober sadness, 

" Land of Shadows, C. Lamb. Umbra. 
"Shadow month, i6th or 17th, 1800. 

"Write your German as plain as sunshine, 
for that must correct itself. You know I am 
homo tmius lingucB : in English — illiterate, a 
dunce, a ninny. " 

Mr. Gutch seems to have soon repented him 
of his friendly deed : — 

"I am going to change my lodgings, having 
received a hint that it would be agreeable at 
Our Lady's next feast, " writes Lamb to Man- 
ning. " I have partly fixed upon most delecta- 
ble rooms which look out (when you stand a-tip- 
toe) over the Thames and Surrey hills. 
My bed faces the river, so as by perking up on 
my haunches and supporting my carcass with 
my elbows, without much wrying my neck, I 
can see the white sails glide by the bottom of 
the King's Bench Walk as I lie in my bed, . . 



MITRE COURT. 8 1 

casement windows with small panes to look 
more like a cottage. . . . There I shall have 
all the privacy of a house without the encum- 
brance, and shall be able to lock my friends out 
as often as I desire to hold free converse with 
my immortal mind, for my present lodgings re- 
semble a minister's levee, I have so increased 
my acquaintance (as they call 'em) since I have 
resided in town. Like the country mouse that 
had tasted a little of urban manners, I long to 
be nibbling my own cheese by my dear self, 
without mouse-traps and time-traps. " 

These rooms were at No. i6 Mitre Court 
Buildings, and here Lamb and his sister lived 
for nine years. But far from "nibbling his 
own cheese " by himself, there for nine years 
he and Mary gathered round their hearth and 
homely, hospitable supper-table, with its bread 
and cheese in these early days, and by and by 
its round of beef or " winter hand of pork, " an 
ever-lengthened succession of friends, cronies 
and acquaintances. There came Manning, with 
his " fine, skeptical, dogmatical face ; " and 
George Dyer, with his head full of innutritions 
learning and his heart of the milk of kindness. 
And podwin, the man of strange contrasts, a 
bold thinker, yet ignorant as a child of human 
nature and weakly vain ; with such a " noisy 
fame, " for a time, as if he were " Briareus Cen- 



82 MARY LAMB, 

timanus or a Tityus tall enough to pull Jupiter 
from his heavens, " and then soon forgotten, or 
remembered only to be denounced ; for a year 
the loving husband of one of the sweetest and 
noblest of women, and after her death led cap- 
tive by the coarse flatteries and vulgar preten- 
sions of one of the commonest. " Is it possible 
that I behold the immortal Godwin ? " said, 
from a neighboring balcony, she who in a few 
months became his second wife, and in a few 
more had alienated some of his oldest friends 
and earned the cordial dislike of all, even of 
Lamb. " I will be buried with this inscription 
over me : * Here lies C. L., the woman-hater;' 
I mean that hated one woman ; for the rest, 
God bless 'em," was his whimsical way of vent- 
ing his feelings towards her ; and Shelley expe- 
rienced the like, though he expressed them less 
pungently. Then there was Holcroft, who had 
fought his way up from grimmest poverty, mis- 
ery and ignorance to the position of an accom- 
plished literary man ; and fine old Captain Bur- 
ney, who had been taught his accidence by 
Eugene Aram and had sailed round the world 
with Captain Cook ; and his son, " noisy Mar- 
tin" with the *' spotless soul," for forty years, 
boy and man, Mary's favorite ; and Phillips, of 
the Marines, who was with Captain Cook at his 
death and shot the savage that killed him ; and 



FRIENDS AND' ACQUAINTANCES. 83 

Rickman, "the finest fellow to drop in a' 
nights," Southey's great friend, though he 
''never read his poetry," as Lamb tells ; staunch 
Crabb Robinson ; Fanny Kelly, with her 
"divine, plain face," who died but the other 
day at the age of ninety-odd ; and Mr. Dawe, 
R. A., a figure of nature's own purest comedy. 
All these- and many more frequented the home 
of Charles and Mary Lamb in these years, and 
live in their letters. 



CHAPTER V. 

Personal Appearance and Manners. — Health. — Influence 
of Mary's Illness upon her Brother. 

No description of Mary Lamb's person in youth 
is to be found ; but hers was a kind of face 
which Time treats gently, adding with one hand 
while he takes away with the other ; compen- 
sating by deepened traces of thought and kind- 
liness and loss of youthful freshness. Like her 
brother, her features were well formed. " Her 
face was pale and somewhat square, very placid, 
with gray, intelligent eyes," says Proctor, who 
first saw her when she was about fifty-three. 
"Eyes brown, soft and penetrating," says an- 
other friend. Miss Cowden Clarke, confirming 
the observation that it is difficult to judge of 
the color of expressive eyes. She, too, lays 
stress upon the strong resemblance to Charles 
and especially on a smile like his, "winning in 
the extreme." De Quincey speaks of her as 
"tliat Madonna-like lady." 

The only original portrait of her in existence, 
I believe, is that by the late Mr. Cary (son of 
Lamb's old friend), now in the possession of 



MARY'S PORTRAIT, 85 

Mr. Edward Hughes, and engraved in the Me- 
moir of Lamb, by Barry Cornwall ; also in 
Scribners Magazine for March, 1881, where it 
is accompanied by a letter from Mr. Gary, which 
states that it was painted in 1834, when Mary 
was seventy. She stands a little behind her 
brother, resting one hand on him and one on 
the back of his chair. There is a characteristic 
sweetness in her attitude and the countenance 
is full of goodness and intelligence ; whilst the 
finer modeling of Charles' features and the in- 
tellectual beauty of his head are rendered with 
considerable success, — Crabb Robinson's strict- 
ures notwithstanding, who, it appears, saw not 
the original, but a poor copy of the figure of 
Charles. It was from Cary's picture that Mr. 
Armitage, R. A., executed the portraits of the 
Lambs in the large fresco on the walls of Uni- 
versity College Hall. Among its many groups 
(of which Crabb Robinson, who commissioned 
the fresco, is the central figure), that containing 
the Lambs includes also Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
Blake and Southey. By an unfortunate clause 
in the deed of gift the fresco, which is painted 
in monochrome, is forbidden to be cleaned, 
even with bread-crumb ; it is therefore already 
very dingy. 

In stature Mary was under the middle size 
and her bodily frame was strong. She could 



86 MARY LAMB. 

walk fifteen miles with ease ; her brother speaks 
of their having walked thirty miles together, 
and, even at sixty years of age, she was capable 
of twelve miles "most days." Regardless of 
weather, too, as Leigh Hunt pleasantly tells in 
his Familiar Epistle in Verse to Lamb : — 

You'll guess why I can't see the snow-covered streets, 
Without thinking of you and your visiting feats, 
When you call to remembrance how you and one more, 
When I wanted it most, used to knock at my door; 
For when the sad winds told us rain would come down, 
Or when snow upon snow fairly clogg'd up the town. 
And dun-yellow fogs brooded over its white, 
So that scarcely a being was seen towards night. 
Then — then said the lady yclept near and dear: 
Now, mind what I tell you — the Lambs will be here. 
So I poked up the flame, and she got out the tea, 
And down we both sat as prepared as could be ; 
And then, sure as fate came the knock of you two. 
Then the lanthorn, the laugh, and the "Well, how 
d'ye do?" 

Mary's manners were easy, quiet, unpretend- 
ing ; to her brother gentle and tender always, 
says Mrs. Cowden Clarke. She had often an 
upward look of peculiar meaning when directed 
towards him, as though to give him an assur- 
ance that all was well with her ; and a way of 
repeating his words assentingly when he spoke 
to her. " He once said, with his peculiar mode 
of tenderness beneath blunt, abrupt speech, 



MARY'S' PORTRAIT. 8/ 

*You must die first, Mary.' She nodded with 
her little quiet nod and sweet smile, * Yes, I 
must die first, Charles.' " When they were in 
company together her eyes followed him every- 
where ; and even when he was talking at the 
other end of the room she would supply some 
word he wanted. Her voice was soft and per- 
suasive, with at times a certain catch, a kind of 
emotional stress in breathing, which gave a 
charm to her reading of poetry and a capti- 
vating earnestness to her mode of speech when 
addressing those she liked. It was a slight 
check that had an eager, yearning effect in her 
voice, creating a softened resemxblance to her 
brother's stammer — that "pleasant little stam- 
mer," as Barry Cornwall called it, ''just enough to 
prevent his making speeches; just enough to 
make you listen eagerly for his words. " Like him, 
too, she took snuff. " She had a small, white, 
delicately-formed hand ; and as it hovered above 
the tortoise-shell snuff-box, the act seemed yet 
another link of association between the brother 
and sister as they sat together over their favor- 
ite books." 

Mary's dress was always plain and neat ; not 
changing much with changing fashions ; yet 
with no unf eminine affectation of complete indif- 
ference. " I do dearly love worked muslin," 
says she in one of her letters, and the " Man- 



SS MARY LAMB. 

ning silks " were worn with no little satisfac- 
tion. As she advanced in years she usually 
wore black stuff or silk ; or on great occasions 
a "dove-colored silk, with a kerchief of snow- 
white muslin folded across her bosom," with a 
cap of the kind in fashion in her youth, a deep- 
frilled border and a bow on the top. 

Mary's severe nurture, though undoubtedly it 
bore with too heavy a strain on her physical 
and mental constitution, fitted her morally and 
practically for the task which she and her 
brother fulfilled to admiration — that of making 
an income,' which for two-thirds of their joint 
lives could not have exceeded two or three hun- 
dreds a year, suffice for the heavy expense of 
her yearly illness, for an open-handed hospi- 
tality and for the wherewithal to help a friend 
in need, not to speak of their extensive acquaint- 
ance among "the great race of borrowers." 
He was, says De Quincey, '^princely — nothing 
short of that in his beneficence. . . . Never 
any one have I known in this world upon whom 
for bounty, for indulgence and forgiveness, for 
charitable construction of doubtful or mixed 
actions, and for regal munificence, you might 
have thrown yourself with so absolute a reli- 
ance as upon this comparatively poor Charles 
Lamb." There'was a certain old-world fajshion 
in Mary's speech corresponding to her appear- 



ELIA'S DESCRIPTION OF MARY. 89 

ance, which was quaint and pleasant ; " yet she 
was oftener a listener than a speaker, and be- 
neath her sparing talk and retiring manner few 
would have suspected the ample information 
and large intelligence that lay concealed." 

But for her portrait sweetly touched in with 
subtle, tender strokes, such as he who knew and 
loved her best could alone give, we must turn 
to Elia's Mackery End: — *' . . . I have ob- 
ligations to Bridget extending beyond the 
period of memory. We house together, old 
bachelor and maid, in a sort of double single- 
ness, with such tolerable comfort, upon the 
whole, that I, for one, find in myself no sort of 
disposition to go out upon the mountains, with 
the rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy. 
We agree pretty well in our tastes and habits, 
yet so as 'with a difference.' We are generally 
in harmony, with occasional bickerings, as it 
should be among near relations. Our sympa- 
,thies are rather understood than expressed; 
and once, upon my dissembling a tone in my 
voice more kind than ordinary, my cousin burst 
into tears and complained that I was altered. 
We are both great readers, in different di- 
rections. While I am hanging over, for the 
thousandth time, some passage in old Burton, 
or one of his strange contemporaries, she is ab- 
stracted in some modern tale or adventure. 



go MARY LAMB. 

whereof our common reading-table is daily fed 
with assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative 
teases me. I have little concern in the pro- 
gress of events. She must have a story — well, 
ill or indifferently told — so there be life stir- 
ring in it and plenty of good or evil accidents. 
The fluctuations of fortune in fiction, and almost 
in real life, have ceased to interest or operate 
but dully upon me. Out-of-the-way humors and 
opinions — heads with some diverting twist in 
them — the oddities of authorship, please me 
most. My cousin has a native disrelish of any- 
thing that sounds odd or bizarre. Nothing goes 
down with her that is quaint, irregular or out of 
the road of common sympathy. She holds nature 
more clever. . . . We are both of us inclined 
to be a little too positive ; and I have observed 
the result of our disputes to be almost uniform- 
ly this : that in matters of fact, dates and circum- 
stances, it turns out that I was in the right and 
my cousin in the wrong. But where we have 
differed upon moral points, upon something 
proper to be done or let alone, whatever heat 
of opposition or steadiness of conviction I set 
out with, I am sure always, in the long run, to 
be brought -over to her way of thinking. I 
must touch upon foibles of my kinswoman with 
a gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be 
told of her faults. She hath an awkward trick 



ELIA'S DESCRIPTION OF MARY, QI 

(to say no worse of it) of reading in company ; 
at which times she will answer yes or no to a 
question without fully understanding its pur- 
port, which is provoking and derogatory in the 
highest degree to the dignity of the putter of 
the said question. Her presence of mind is 
equal to the most pressing trials of life, but will 
sometimes desert her upon trifling occasions. 
When the purpose requires it, and is a thing of 
moment, she can speak to it greatly ; but in 
mattersv which are not stuff of the conscience 
she hath been known sometimes to let slip a 
word less seasonably. 

" In seasons of distress she is the truest com- 
forter, but in the teasing accidents and minor 
perplexities which do not call out the will to 
meet thern, she sometimes maketh matters 
worse by an excess of participation. If she 
does not always divide your trouble, upon the 
pleasanter occasions of life she is sure always 
to treble your satisfaction. She is excellent to 
be at a play with, or upon a visit ; but best when 
she goes a journey with you." 

" Little could any one, observing Miss Lamb 
in the habitual serenity of her demeanor," 
writes Talfourd, "guess the calamity in which 
she had partaken or the malady which fright- 
fully checkered her life. From Mr. Lloyd, who, 
although saddened by impending delusion, was 



92 MARY LAMB. 

always found accurate in his recollection of long- 
past events and conversations, I learned that 
she had described herself, on her. recovery from 
the fatal attack, as having experienced while it 
was subsiding such a conviction that she was 
absolved in Heaven from all taint of the deed 
in which she had been the agent — such an as- 
surance^that it was a dispensation of Providence 
for good, though so terrible — such a sense that 
her mother knew her entire innocence and shed 
down blessings upon her, as though she had 
seen the reconcilement in solemn vision — that 
she was not sorely afflicted by the recollection. 
It was as if the old Greek notion of the neces- 
sity for the unconscious shedder of blood, else 
polluted though guiltless, to pass through a re- 
ligious purification, had in her case been hap- 
pily accomplished; so that not only was she 
without remorse, but without other sorrow than 
attends on the death of an infirm parent in a 
good old age. She never shrank from alluding 
to her mother when any topic connected with 
her own youth made such a reference, in ordi- 
nary respects, natural; but spoke of her as* 
though no fearful remembrance was associated* 
with the image ; so that some of her most inti- 
mate friends who knew of the disaster believed 
that she had never become aware of her own 
share in its horrors. It is still more singular 



HER MALADY. 93 

that in the wanderings of her insanity, amidst 
all the vast throngs of imagery she presented 
of her early days, this picture never recurred, 
or, if it ever did, not associated with shapes of 
terror." 

Perhaps this was not so surprising as at first 
sight it appears ; for the deed was done in a state 
of frenzy, in which the brain could no more have 
received a definite impression of the scene than 
waves lashed by storm can reflect an image. 
Her knowledge of the facts was never colored 
by consciousness, but came to her from without, 
"as a tale that is told." The statement, also, that 
Mary could always speak calmly of her mother, 
seems to require some qualification. Emma 
Isola, Lamb's adopted daughter, afterwards Mrs. 
Moxon, once asked her, ignorant of the facts, 
why she never spoke of her mother, and was 
answered only with a cry of distress ; probably 
the question, coming abruptly and from a child, 
confronted her in a new, sudden and peculiarly 
painful way with the tragedy of her youth. 

"Miss Lamb would have been remarkable 
for the sweetness of her disposition, the clear- 
ness of her understanding, and the gentle wis- 
dom of all her acts and words," continues Tal- 
fourd, "even if these qualities had not been pre- 
sented in marvelous contrast with the distrac- 
tions under which she suffered for weeks, latter- 



94 MAJ^V LAMB. 

ly for months in every year. There was no tinge 
of insanity discernible in her manner to the 
most observant eye : not even in those distress- 
ful periods when the premonitory symptoms 
had apprised her of its approach, and she was 
making preparations for seclusion." This, too, 
must be taken with some qualification. In a 
letter from Coleridge to Matilda Betham he 
mentions that Mary had been to call on the 
Godwins, "and that her manner of conversation 
had greatly alarmed them (dear, excellent creat- 
ure ! such is the restraining power of her love 
for Charles Lamb over her mind, that he is al- 
ways the last person in whose presence any 
alienation of her understanding betrays itself) ; 
that she talked far more and with more agitation 
concerning me than about G, Burnet [the too 
abrupt mention of whose death had upset her ; 
he was an old friend and one of the original 
Pantisocratic group], and told Mrs. Godwin that 
she herself had written to William Wordsworth, 
exhorting him to come to town immediately, 
for that my mind was seriously unhinged." To 
resume. "Her character," wrote Talfourd, "in 
all its essential sweetness,was like her brother's ; 
while, by a temper more placid, a spirit of en- 
joyment more serene, she was enabled to guide, 
to counsel, to cheer him and to protect him on 
the verge of the mysterious calamity from the 



HER MALADY. 95 

depths of which she rose so often unruffled to his 
side. To a friend in any difficulty she was the 
most comfortable of advisers, the wisest of con- 
solers. Hazlitt used to say that he never met 
with a woman who could reason and had met 
with only one thoroughly reasonable — the sole 
exception being Mary Lamb. She did not wish, 
however, to be made an exception, to the gen- 
eral disparagement of her sex;, for in all her 
thoughts and feelings she was most womanly — 
keeping under even undue subordination to her 
notion of a woman's province, an intellect of 
rare excellence which flashed out when the re- 
straints of gentle habit and humble manner 
were withdrawn by the terrible force of disease. 
Though her conversation in sanity was never 
marked by smartness or repartee, seldom rising 
beyond that of a sensible, quiet gentlewoman, 
appreciating and enjoying the talents of her 
friends, it was otherwise in her madness. Lamb, 
in his letter to Miss Fryer announcing his de- 
termination to be entirely with her, speaks of 
her pouring out memories of all the events and 
persons of her younger days ; but he does not 
mention, what I am able from repeated experi- 
ences to add, that her ramblings often sparkled 
with brilliant description and shattered beauty. 
She would fancy herself in the days of Queen 
Anne or George the First; and describe the 



96 MAI^V LAMB. 

brocaded dames and courtly manners as though 
she had been bred among them, in the best style 
of the old comedy. It was all broken and dis- 
jointed, so that the hearer could remember little 
of her discourse ; but the fragments were like 
the jeweled speeches of Congreve, only shaken 
from their settings. There was sometimes even 
a vein of crazy logic running through them, as- 
sociating things essentially most dissimilar, but 
connecting them by a verbal association in 
strange order. As a mere physical instance of 
deranged intellect, her condition was, I believe, 
extraordinary ; it was as if the finest elements 
of the mind had been shaken into fantastic 
combinations, like those of a kaleidoscope." 

The immediate cause of her attacks would 
generally seem to have been excitement or over- 
fatigue, causing, in the first instance, loss of 
sleep, a feverish restlessness, and ending in the 
complete overthrow of reason. "Her relapses," 
says Proctor, " were not dependent on the 
seasons; they came in hot weather and with 
the freezing winters. The only remedy seems 
to have been extreme quiet when any slight 
sympton of uneasiness was apparent. If any 
exciting talk occurred Charles had to dismiss 
his friend with a whisper. If any stupor or 
extraordinary silence was observed, then he had 
to rouse her instantly. He has been seen to 



HER MALADY. 9/ 

take the kettle from the fire and place it for a 
moment on her head-dress, in order to startle 
her into recollection." Once the sudden 
announcement of the marriage of a young 
friend, whose welfare she had at heart, restored 
her in a moment, after a protracted illness, "as 
if by an electric stroke, to the entire possession 
of her senses." But if no precautions availed 
to remove the premonitory symptom, then would 
Mary "as gently as possible prepare her brother 
for the duty he must perform ; and thus, unless 
he could stave off the terrible separation till 
Sunday, oblige him to ask leave of absence from 
the office, as if for a day's pleasure — a bitter 
mockery ! On one occasion Mr. Charles Lloyd 
met them slowly pacing together a little foot- 
path in Hoxton fields, both weeping bitterly, 
and found, on joining them, that they were tak- 
ing their solemn way to the accustomed asylum." 
Holiday trips were almost always followed by a 
seizure ; and never did Mary set out on one but 
with her own hands she packed a straight waist- 
coat. 

The attacks were commonly followed by a 
period of extreme depression, a sense of being 
shattered, and by a painful loss of self-reliance. 
These were but temporary states, however. 
Mary's habitual frame of mind was, as Talfourd 
says, serene and capable of placid enjoyment. 

4 



9^ . MAJ^V LAMB. 

In her letters to Sara Stoddart there are some 
affecting and probably unique disclosures of 
how one who is suffering from madness feels ; 
and what, taught by her own experience, Mary 
regarded as the most important points in the 
management of the insane. In reference to her 
friend's mother, who was thus afflicted, she 
writes : — 

"Do not, I conjure you, let her unhappy mal- 
ady afflict you, too deeply. I spQ3.'k/ro7n experi- 
ence and from the opportunity I have had of 
much observation in such cases, that insane 
people, in the fancies they take into their heads, 
do not feel as one in a sane state of mind does 
under the real evil of poverty, the perception of 
having done wrong, or of any such thing that 
runs in their heads. 

" Think as little as you can, and let your 
whole care be to be certain that she is treated 
with tenderness. I lay a stress upon this 
because it is a thing of which people in her 
state are uncommonly susceptible, and which 
hardly any one is at all aware of ; a hired 
nurse nevery even though in all other respects 
they are good kind of people. I do not think 
your own presence necessary, unless she takes 
to yoiL very 'jmtchy except for the purpose of 
seeing with your own eyes that she is very 
kindly treated, 



HER 'MALADY. 99 

" I do long to see you ! God bless and 
comfort you." 

And again a few weeks later : — 

"After a very feverish night I writ a letter 
to you and I have been distressed about it ever 
since. That which gives me most concern is 
the way in which I talked about your mother's 
illness, and which I have since feared you might 
construe into my having a doubt of your show- 
ing her proper attention without my impertinent 
interference. God knows, nothing of this kind 
was ever in my thoughts, but I have entered 
very deeply into your affliction with regard to 
your mother ; and while I was writing, the many 
poor souls in the kind of desponding way she 
is, whom I have seen, came fresh into my 
mind, and all the mismanagement with which I 
have seen them treated was strong in my mind, 
and I wrote under a forcible impulse which I 
could not at the time resist, but I have fretted 
so much about it since, that I think it is the 
last time I will ever let my pen run away with 
me. 

" Your kind heart will, I know, even if you 
have been a little displeased, forgive me when I 
assure you my spirits have been so much hurt 
by my last illness, that at times I hardly know 
what I do. I do not mean to alarm you about 
mysejf or to plead an excuse ; but I am very 



lOO MARY LAMB. 

much otherwise than you have always known 
me. I do not think any one perceives me al- 
tered, but I have lost all self-confidence in my 
own actions, and one cause of my low spirits is 
that I never feel satisfied with anything I do — 
a perception of not being in a sane state perpet- 
ually haunts me. I am ashamed to confess this 
weakness to you ; which, as I am so sensible of, 
I ought to strive to conquer. But I tell you 
that you may excuse any part of my letter that 
has given offense ; for your not answering it, 
when you are such a punctual correspondent, 
has made me very uneasy. 

" Write immediately, my dear Sara, but do 
not notice this letter, nor do not mention any- 
thing I said relative to your poor mother. Your 
handwriting will convince me you are friends 
with me ; and if Charles, who must see my let- 
ter, was to know I had first written foolishly 
and then fretted about the event of my folly, he 
would both ways be angry with me. 

*' I would desire you to direct to me at home, 
but your hand is so well known to Charles that 
that would not do. Therefore, take no notice 
of my megrims till we meet, which I most ar- 
dently long to do. An hour spent in your com- 
pany would be a cordial to my drooping h§art. 

" Write, I beg, by the return of post ; and as 
I am very anxious to hear whether you are, as I 



• EFFECT UPON HER BROTHER. lOI 

fear, dissatisfied with me, you shall, if you 
please, direct my letter to nurse. I do not 
mean to continue a secret correspondence, but 
you must oblige me with this one letter. In 
future I will always show my letters before 
they go, which will be a proper check upon my 
wayward pen." 

But it was upon her brother that the burthen 
lay heaviest. It was on his brain that the cruel 
image of the mother's death-scene was burnt in, 
and that the grief and loneliness consequent on 
Mary's ever-recurring attacks pressed sorest. 

" His anxiety for her health, even in his most 
convivial moments, was unceasing. If in com- 
pany he perceived she looked languid, he would 
repeatedly ask her, ' Mary, does your head ache .'* 
Don't you feel unwell } ' and would be satisfied 
with none of her gentle assurances that his 
fears were groundless. He was always fearful 
of her sensibilities being too deeply engaged, 
and if in her presence any painful accident or 
history was discussed, he would turn the con- 
versation with some desperate joke." Miss 
Betham related to Talfourd that once, when she 
was speaking to Miss Lamb of her brother, and 
in her earnestness Mary had laid her hand 
kindly on the eulogist's shoulder, he came up 
hastily and interrupted them, saying, ^' Come, 
come, we must not talk sentimentally," and took 
up the conversation in his gayest strain. 



I02 MARY LAMB. 

The constant anxiety, the forebodings, the 
unremitting, watchful scrutiny of his sister's 
state, produced a nervous tension and irritabil- 
ity that pervaded his whole life and manifested 
themselves in many different ways. 

"When she discovers symptoms of approach- 
ing illness," he once wrote to Dorothy Words- 
worth, "it is not easy to say what is best to do. 
Being by ourselves is bad and going out is bad. 
I get so irritable and wretched with fear that I 
constantly hasten on the disorder. You cannot 
conceive the misery of such a foresight. I am 
sure that for the week before she left me I was 
little better than light-headed. I now am calm, 
but sadly taken down and flat." Well might he 
say, "My waking life has much of the confu- 
sion, the trouble and obscure perplexity of an 
ill dream." For he, too, had to wrestle in his 
own person with the same foe, the same heredi- 
tary tendency ; though, after one overthrow of 
reason in his youth, he wrestled successfully. 
But the frequent allusions in his letters, espe- 
cially in later years, to attacks of nervous fever, 
sleeplessness, and depression "black as a 
smith's beard. Vulcanic, Stygian," show how 
near to the brink he was sometimes dragged. 
" You do not know how sore and weak a brain 
I have, or you would allow for many things 
which you set down to whim," he wrote to God- 



EFFECT UPON HER BROTHER. 103 

win. And again, when there had been some 
coolness between them : ^' . . . did the black 
Hypochondria never gripe tky heart till thou 
hast taken a friend for an enemy ? The foul 
fiend Flibbertigibbet leads me over four-inched 
bridges to course my own shadow for a 
traitor. 

*'Yet nervous, tremulous as he seemed," 
writes Talfourd, '^so slight of frame that he 
looked only fit for'the most placid fortune, when 
the dismal emergencies which checkered his 
life arose, he acted with as much promptitude 
and vigor as if he were strung with herculean 
sinews." *' Such fortitude in his manners, and 
such a ravage of suffering in his countenance 
did he display," said Coleridge, '*as went to the 
hearts of his friends." It was rather by the 
violence of the reaction that a keen observer 
might have estimated the extent of these suffer- 
ings ; by that "escape from the pressure of 
agony, into a fantastic, sometimes almost 
demoniac mirth, which made Lamb a problem 
to strangers, while it endeared him thousand- 
fold to those who really knew him." 

The child of impulse ever to appear, 

And yet through duty's path strictly to steer, 

O Lamb, thou art a mystery to me ! 

Thou art so prudent, and so mad with wildness — 

wrote Charles Lloyd. 



I04 MARY LAMB, 

Sweet and strong must have been the nature 
upon which the crush of so severe a destiny 
produced no soreness, no bitterness, no vio- 
lence, but only the rebound of a wild, fantastic 
gaiety. In his writings not only is there an en- 
tire absence of the morbid, the querulous ; I can 
find but one expression that breathes of what 
his sombre experiences were. It is in that most 
masterly of all his criticisms (unless it be the 
one on Lear), the Genius mtd Character of Ho- 
garth, where, in the sublime description of the 
Bedlam scene in the Rakes Progress, he tells of 
"the frightful, obstinate laugh of madness." In 
one apparent way only did the calamity which 
overshadowed his life exert an influence on his 
genius. It turned him, as Talfourd finely sug- 
gests, " to seek a kindred interest in the sterner 
stuff of old tragedy — to catastrophes more 
fearful even than his own — to the aspects of 
pale passion, to shapes of heroic daring and 
more heroic suffering, to the agonizing contests 
of opposing affections and the victories of the 
soul over calamity and death, which the old 
English drama discloses, and in the contempla- 
tion of which he saw his own suffering nature 
at once mirrored and exalted." In short, no 
m.an ever stood more nobly the test of life-long 
affliction : " a deep distress had harmonized his 
soul." 



EFFECT UPON HER BROTHER, 105 

Only on one point did the stress of his diffi- 
cult lot find him vulnerable, one flaw bring to 
light — a tendency to counteract his depression 
and take the edge off his poignant anxieties by 
a too free use of stimulants. The manners of 
his day, the custom of producing wine and 
strong drinks on every possible occasion, bore 
hard on such a craving and fostered a man's 
weakness. But Lamb maintained to the end a 
good standing fight with the enemy, and, if not 
wholly victorious, still less was he wholly de- 
feated. So much on account of certain home 
anxieties to which Mary's letters to Sara Stod- 
dart make undisguised allusion. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Visit to Coleridge at Greta Hall. — Wordsworth and his 
Sister in London. — Letters to Miss Stoddart. — Col- 
eridge goes to Malta. — Letter to Dorothy Words- 
worth on the Death of her Brother John. 

1 802-1 805. — JEt. 38-41. 

In the summer of 1802, when holiday -time 
came round, Charles was siezed with " a strong 
desire of visiting remote regions ; " and after 
some whimsical deliberations his final resolve 
was to go with Mary to see Coleridge at ■ the 
lakes. 

'' I set out with Mary to .Kesw^ick," he tells 
Manning, " without giving any notice to Coler- 
idge [who was now living at Greta Hall, soon 
to become Southey's home for the rest of his 
life], for my time, being precious, did not admit 
of it. We got in in the evening, travelling in a 
post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a gor- 
geous sunset w^hich transmuted the mountains 
into all colors, purple, etc. We thought we had 
got into fairy-land ; but that went off (and it 
never came again while we stayed, and we had 



WITH COLERIDGE AT GRETA HALL. lO/ 

no more- fine sunsets), and we entered Coler- 
idge's comfortable study just in the dusk, when 
the mountains were all dark with clouds upon 
their heads. Such an impression I never re- 
ceived from objects of sight before nor do I 
suppose I ever can again. Glorious creatures, 
fine old fellows, Skiddaw, etc., I shall never 
forget ye — how ye lay about that night like an 
intrenchment ; gone to bed, as it seemed, for 
the night, but promising that ye were to be 
seen in the morning. Coleridge had got a blaz- 
ing fire in his study, which is a large, antique, 
ill-shaped room with an old-fashioned organ, 
never played upon, big enough for a church ; 
shelves of scattered folios, an ^oiian harp and 
an old sofa half-bed, etc. And all looking out 
upon the last. fading view of Skiddaw and his 
broad-breasted brethren. What a night ! " 

The poet had now a second son, or rather a 
third (for the second had died in infancy), Der- 
went, a fine, bright, fair, broad-chested little 
fellow not quite two years old, with whom 
Charles and Mary were delighted. A merry 
sprite he was, in a yellow frock which obtained 
for him the nickname of Stumpy Canary, who 
loved to race from kitchen to parlor and from 
parlor to kitchen, just putting in his head at 
the door with a rougish smile to catch notice, 
then off again, shaking his little sides with 



I08 MARY LAMB. 

laughter. He fairly won their hearts, and long 
after figures in their letters as Pi-pos Pot-pos, 
his own way of pronouncing striped opossum 
and spotted opossum, which he would point out 
triumphantly in his picture-book. Hartley, now 
six, was a prematurely grave and thoughtful 
child who had already, as a curious anecdote 
told by Crabb Robinson shows, begun to take 
surprising plunges into " the metaphysic well 
without a bottom ; " for once, when asked some- 
thing about himself and called by name, he 
said, "Which Hartley.?" "Why, is there 
more than one Hartley .? " " Yes, there's a 
deal of Hartleys ; there's Picture Hartley [Haz- 
litt had painted his portrait] and Shadow Hart- 
ley, and there's Echo Hartley and there's Catch- 
me-fast Hartley," seizing his own arm with the 
other hand ; thereby showing, said his father, 
that "he had begun to reflect on what Kant 
calls the great and inexplicable m_ystery that 
man should be both his own subject and object, 
and that these should yet be one ! " 

Three delightful weeks they stayed. "So 
we hav^ seen," continues Lamb to Manning, 
"Keswick, Grasmere, Ambleside, Ulswater 
(where the Clarksons live), and a place at the 
other end of Ulswater ; I forget the name [Pat- 
terdale] to which we travelled on a very sultry 
day, over the middle of Helvellyn. We have 



WITH COLERIDGE' AT GRETA HALL. 109 

clambered up to the top of Skiddaw and I have 
waded up the bed of Lodore. Mary was excess- 
ively tired when she got about half-way up 
Skiddaw, but we came to a cold rill (than which 
nothing can be imagined more cold, running 
over cold stones), and, with the reinforcement 
of a draught of cold water, she surmounted it 
most manfully. Oh, its fine black head! and 
the bleak air atop of it, with the prospect of 
mountains all about and about making you gid- 
dy ; and then Scotland afar off and the border 
countries so famous in song and ballad ! It was 
a day that will stand out like a mountain, I am 
sure, in my life." 

Wordsworth was away at Calais, but the 
Lambs stayed a day or so in his cottage with 
the Clarksons (he of slavery abolition fame and 
she "one of the friendliest, comfortablest women 
we know, who made the little stay one of the 
pleasantest times we ever passed"); saw Lloyd 
again, but remained distrustful of him on ac- 
count of the seeds of bitterness he had once 
sown between the friends, and finally got home 
very pleasantly: Mary a good deal fatigued, 
finding the difference between going to a place 
and coming from it, but not otherwise the 
worse." "Lloyd has written me a fine letter of 
friendship," says Lamb soon after his return, 
"all about himself and Sophia, and love and 



no MARY LAMB. 

cant, which I have not answered. I have not 
given up the idea of writing to him, but it will 
be done very plainly and • sincerely, without ac- 
rimony." 

They found the Wordsworths (the poet and his 
sister, that is, for he was not yet married, though 
just about to be) lodging near their own quar- 
ters, saw much of them, pioneered them through 
Bartlemy Fair; and now on Mary's part was 
formed that intimacy with Dorothy which led to 
her being their constant visitor and sometimes 
their house-guest when she was in London. 

As great a contrast in most respects to Dor- 
othy Wordsworth, as the whole range of woman- 
kind could have furnished, was Mary's other 
friend and correspondent, Sara Stoddart, after- 
wards Mrs. Hazlitt. Sara was the only daugh- 
ter of a retired lieutenant in the navy, a Scotch- 
man who had settled down on a little property 
at Winterslow, near Salisbury, which she ulti- 
mately inherited. She was a young lady with 
a business-like determination to marry, and 
with many suitors ; but, far from following the 
old injunction to be off with the old love before 
being on with the new, she always cautiously 
kept the old love dangling till she was quite 
sure the new was the more eligible. Mary's 
letters to her have happily been preserved and 
published by Miss Stoddart's grandson, Mr. W. 



LETTER TO SARA STODDART. Ill 

Carew Hazlitt, in his Mary and ChaT'les Lamb. 
The first, dated September 21, 1803, was writ- 
ten after Miss Stoddart had been staying with 
the Lambs, and when a decision had been ar- 
rived at that she should accompany her only 
brother, Dr. Stoddart, to Malta, where he had 
just been appointed King's Advocate. Mary's 
spelling, and here and there even a little slip in 
the matter of gramm^, have been retained as 
seeming part of the individuality of the let- 
ters : — 

"■ I returned from my visit yesterday and was 
very much pleased to find your letter ; for I 
have been very anxious to hear how you are 
going oh. I could hardly help expecting to see 
you when I came in ; yet though I should have 
rejoiced to have seen your merry face again, I 
believe it was better as it was, upon the whole ; 
and all things considered, it is certainly better 
you should go to Malta. The terms you are 
upon with your lover [a Mr. Turner, to whom 
she was engaged] does (as you say it will) ap- 
pear wondrous strange to me ; however, as I 
cannot enter into your feelings I certainly can 
have nothing to say to it, only that I sincerely 
wish you happy in your own way, however odd 
that way may appear to me to be. I would 
begin now to advise you to drop all corre- 
spondence with William [not William Hazlitt, 



112 MARY LAMB. 

but an earlier admirer] ; but, as I said before, 
as I cannot enter into your feelings and views 
of things, your ways not being my ways, why 
should I tell you what I would do in your situa- 
tion? So, child, take thy own ways and God 
prosper thee in them ! 

"One thing my advising spirit must say : use 
as little secresy as possible ; make a friend of 
your sister-in-law ; you ^now I was not struck 
with her at first sight, but, upon your account, 
I have watched and marked her very attentively, 
and while she was eating a bit of cold mutton 
in our kitchen we had a serious conversation. 
From the frankness of her manner I am con- 
vinced she is a person I could make a friend of ; 
why should not you ? We talked freely about 
you: she seems to have a just notion of your 
character and will be fond of you if you will let 
her." 

After instancing the misunderstanding be- 
tween her own mother and aunt already quoted, 
Mary continues : — 

" My aunt and my mother were wholly unlike 
you and your sister, yet in some degree theirs is 
the secret history, I believe, of all sisters-in-law, 
and you will smile when I tell you I think my- 
self the only woman in the world who could live 
with a brother's wife and make a real friend of 
her, partly from early observation of the un- 



OF FRANKNESS. II3 

happy example I have j ust given you, and partly 
from a knack I know I have of looking into 
people's real characters and never expecting 
them to act out of it — never expecting another 
to do as I would in the same case. When you 
leave your mother, and say if you never see her 
again you shall feel no remorse, and when you 
make a Jewish bargain with your lovevy all this 
gives me no offense, because it is your nature 
and your temper, and I do not expect or want 
you to be otherwise than you are. I love you 
for the good that is in you and look for no 
change. 

^' But certainly you ought to struggle with the 
evil that does most easily beset you — a total 
want of politeness in behavior — I would say 
modesty of behavior, but that I should not con- 
vey to you my idea of the word modesty ; for I 
certainly do not mean that you want real modesty^ 
and what is usually called false or mock mod- 
esty I certainly do not wish you to possess ; yet I 
trust you know what I mean well enough. 
Secresyy though you appear all frankness, is cer- 
tainly a grand failing of yours ; it is likewise 
your brother Sf and, therefore, a family failing. 
By secresy I mean you both want the habit of 
telling each other at the moment everything 
that happens, where you go and what you do— ^ 
that free communication of letters and opinions 



114 MARY LAMB. 

just as they arrive, as Charies and I do, and 
which is, after all, the only ground-work of 
friendship. Your brother, I will answer for it, 
will never tell his wife or his sister all that is in 
his mind ; he will receive letters and not 
[mention it]. This is a fault Mrs. Stoddart 
can never [tell him of], but she can and will 
feel it, though on the whole and in every other 
respect she is happy with him. Begin, for 
God's sake, at the first and tell her everything 
that passes. At first she may hear you with in- 
difference, but in time this will gain her af- 
fection and confidence ; show her all your letters 
(no matter if she does not show hers). It is a 
pleasant thing for a friend to put into one's 
hand a letter just fresh from the post. I would 
even say, begin with showing her this, but 
that is freely written and loosely, and some 
apology ought to be made for it which I know 
not how to make, for I must write freely or not 
at all. 

"If you do this well she will tell your broth- 
er, you will say ; and what then, quotha } It 
will beget a freer communication amongst you, 
which is a thing devoutly to be wished. 

"God bless you and grant you may preserve 
your integrity and remain unmarried and pen- 
niless, and make William a good and happy 
wife." 



COLERIDGE GOES TO MALTA. II5 

No wonder Mary's friendships were so stable 
and so various, with this knack of hers of look- 
ing into another's real character and never ex- 
pecting him or her to act out of it, or to do as 
she would in the same case ; taking no offense, 
looking for no change and asking for no other 
explanation than that it was her friend's nature. 
It is an epitome of social wisdom and of gener- 
ous sentiment. 

Coleridge had long been in bad health and 
worse spirits ; and what he had first ignorantly 
used as a remedy had now become his tyrant — 
opium ; for a time the curse of his life and the 
blight of his splendid powers. Sometimes 

Adown Lethean streams his spirit drifted; 

sometimes he was stranded "in a howling wil- 
derness of ghastly dreams," waking and sleep- 
ing, followed by deadly languors which opium 
caused and cured and caused again, driving him 
round in an accursed circle. He came up to 
London at the beginning of 1804, was much 
with the Lambs if not actually their guest, 
and finally decided to try change and join his 
friend Dr. Stoddart in Malta, where he landed 
April 1 8th. Mary, full of earnest and affec- 
tionate solicitude, sent a letter by him to Sara 
Stoddart, who had already arrived, bespeaking 
a warm and indulgent welcome for her suffer- 
ing friend : — 



Il6 MARY LAMB. 

"I will just write a few hasty lines to say 
Coleridge is setting off sooner than we expected, 
and I every moment expect him to call in one 
of his great hilrrys for, this. We rejoiced with 
exceeding great j oy to hear of your safe arrival. 
I hope your brother will return home in a few 
years a very rich man. Seventy pounds in one 
fortnight is a pretty beginning. 

"I envy your brother the pleasure of seeing 
Coleridge drop in unexpectedly upon him ; we 
talk — but it is but wild and idle talk — of fol- 
lowing him. He is to get my brother some snug 
little place of a thousand a year, and we are to 
leave all and come and live among ye. What 
a pretty dream ! 

"Coleridge is very ill. I dread the thoughts 
of his long voyage. Write as soon. as he arrives 
whether he does or not, and tell me how he 
is. . . . 

" He has got letters of recommendation to 
Governor Ball and God knows v/ho ; and he will 
talk and talk and be universally admired. But 
I wish to write for him a lette7' of recommenda- 
tion to Mrs. Stoddart and to yourself to take 
upon ye, on his first arrival, to be kind, affec- 
tionate nurses ; and mind, now, that you per- 
form this duty faithfully and write me a good 
account of yourself. Behave to him as you 
would to me or to Charles if we came sick and 
unhappy to you. 



COLERIDGE GOES TO MALTA. 11/ 

" I have no news to send you ; Coleridge will 
tell you how we are going on. Charles has lost 
the newspaper [an engagement on the Morning 
Post, which Coleridge had procured for him], 
but what we dreaded as an evil has proved a 
great blessing, for we have both strangely re- 
covered our health and spirits since this has 
happened ; and I hope, when I write next, I 
shall be able to tell you Charles has begun 
something which will produce a little money, 
for it is not well to be very poor, which we cer- 
tainly are at this present writing. 

" I sit writing here and thinking almost you 
will see it to-morrow ; and what a long, long 
time it will be ere you receive this ! When I 
saw your letter I fancy'd you were even just 
then in the first bustle of a new reception, 
every moment seeing new faces and staring at 
new objects, when, at that time, everything had 
become familiar to you ; and the strangers, your 
new dancing partners, had perhaps become gos- 
siping fire-side friends. You tell me of your 
gay, splendid doings ; tell me, likewise, what 
manner of home-life you lead. Is a quiet even- 
ing in a Maltese drawing-room as> pleasant as 
those we have passed in Mitre Court and Bell 
Yard ? Tell me all about it, everything pleas- 
ant and everything unpleasant that befalls you. 

*' I want you to say a great deal about yourself. 



Il8 MARY LAMB. 

Are you happy ? and do you not repent going out ? 
I wish I could see you for one hour only. 

" Remember me affectionately to your sister 
and brother, and tell me when you write if Mrs. 
Stoddart likes Malta and how the climate agrees 
with her and with thee. 

"We heard you were taken prisoners, and 
for several days believed the tale. 

" How did the pearls and the fine court finery 
bear the fatigues of the voyage, and how often 
have they been worn and admired .-* 

" Rickman wants to know if you are going to 
be married yet. Satisfy him in that little par- 
ticular when you write. 

" The Fenwicks send their love and Mrs. 
Reynolds her love, and the little old lady her 
best respects. 

*' Mrs. Jeffries, who I see now and then, talks 
of you with tears in her eyes, and when she 
heard you was taken prisoner. Lord ! how 
frightened she was. She has heard, she tells 
me, that Mr. Stoddart is to have a pension of 
two thousand "a year whenever he chooses to re- 
turn to England. 

" God bless you and send you all manner of 
comforts and happinesses." 

Mrs. Reynolds was another "little old lady," 
a familiar figure at the Lambs' table. She had 
once been Charles' school-mistress; had made 



LETTER TO' SARA S TODD ART. I19 

an unfortunate marriage, and would have gone 
under in the social stream but for his kindly- 
hand. Out of their slender means he allowed 
her ;£30 a year. She tickled Hood's fancy 
when he too became a frequent guest there; 
and he has described her as formal, fair and 
fiaxen-wigged like an elderly wax doll, speaking 
as if by an artificial apparatus, through some 
defect in the palate, and with a slight limp and 
a twist occasioned by running too precipitately 
down Greenwich Hill in her youth ! She re- 
membered Goldsmith, who had once lent her 
his Deserted Village. 

In those days of universal warfare and priva- 
teering it was an anxious matter to have a friend 
tossing in the Bay of Biscay, gales and storms 
apart ; so that tidings from Sara had been ea- 
gerly watched for : — 

"Your letter," writes Mary, "which contained 
the news of Coleridge's arrival, was a most wel- 
come one ; for we had begun to entertain very 
unpleasant apprehensions for his safety; and 
your kind reception of the forlorn wanderer 
gave me the greatest pleasure, and I thank you 
for it in my own and my brother's name. I 
shall depend upon you for hearing of his wel- 
fare, for he does not write himself ; but as long 
as we know he is safe and in such kind 
friends' hands we do not mind. Your letters, 



120 MARY LAMB. 

my dear Sara, are to me very, very precious 
ones. They are the kindest, best, most natural 
ones I ever received. The one containing the 
news of the arrival of Coleridge is, perhaps, the 
best I ever saw ; and your old friend Charles is ' 
of my opinion. We sent it off to Mrs. Coler- 
idge and the Wordsworths — as well because 
we thought it our duty to give them the first 
notice we had of our dear friend's safety, as that 
we w^ere proud of showing our Sara's pretty let- 
ter. 

"The letters we received a few days after 
from you and your brother were far less wel- 
come ones. I rejoiced to hear your sister is 
well, but I grieved for the loss of the dear baby, 
and I am sorry to find your brother is not so suc- 
cessful as he expected to be; and yet I am al- 
most tempted to wish his ill fortune may send 
him over to us again. He has a friend, I under- 
stand, who is now at the head of the Admiral- 
ty ; why may he not return and make a fortune 
here ? 

"I cannot condole with you very sincerely 
upon your failure in the fortune-making way. If 
you regret it, so do I. But I hope to see you a 
comfortable English wife ; and the forsaken, for- 
gotten William, of English-partridge memory, I 
have still a hankering after. However, I thauK 
you for your frank communication and I beg 



LETTER TO SARA STODDART 121 

you will continue it in future ; and if I do not 
agree with a good grace to your having a Mal- 
tese husband, I will wish you happy, provided 
you make it a part of your marriage articles that 
your husband shall allow you to come over sea 
and make me one visit ; else may neglect and 
overlookedness be your portion while you stay 
there. 

'* I would condole with you when the misfor- 
tune has befallen your poor leg ; but such is the 
blessed distance we are at from each other that 
I hope, before you receive this, you have forgot 
it ever happened. 

" Our compliments to the high ton at the Mal- 
tese court. Your brother is so profuse of them 
to me that, being, as you know, so unused to 
them, they perplex me sadly ; in future I beg 
they may be discontinued. They always remind 
me of the free and I believe very improper let- 
ter I wrote to you while you were at the Isle of 
Wight [that already given advising frankness]. 
The more kindly you and your brother and sis- 
ter took the impertinent advice contained in it, 
the more certain I feel that it was unnecessary, 
and, therefore, highly improper. Do not let 
your brother compliment me into the memory 
of it again. 

"My brother has had a letter from your 
mother which has distressed him sadly — about 



122 MAJ^y LAMB. 

the postage of some letters being paid by my 
brother. Your silly brother, it seems, has in- 
formed your mother (I did not think your 
brother could have been so silly) that Charles 
had grumbled on paying the said postage. The 
fact was, just at that time we were very poor, 
having lost the Morning Post^ and we were 
beginning to practice a strict economy. My 
brother, who never makes up his mind whether 
he will be a miser or a spendthrift, is at all 
times a strange mixture of both [rigid in those 
small economies which enabled him to be not 
only just but generous on small means].'* **0f 
this failing the even economy of your correct 
brother's temper makes him an ill judge. The 
miserly part of Charles, at that time smarting 
under his recent loss, then happened to reign 
triumphant ; and he would not write or let me 
write so often as he wished because the postage 
cost two and fourpence. Then came two or 
three of your poor mother's letters nearly to- 
gether ; and the two and f ourpences he wished 
but grudged to pay for his own he was forced 
to pay for hers. In this dismal distress he 
applied to Fenwick to get his friend Motley to 
send them free from Portsmouth. This Mr. 
Fenwick could have done for half a word's 
speaking ; but this he did not do ! Then 
Charles foolishly and unthinkingly complained 



LETTER TO SARA STODDART. 123 

to your brother in a half -serious, half -joking 
way ; and your brother has wickedly and with 
malice aforethought told your mother. Oh, 
fye upon him ! what will your mother think of 
us ? 

" I, too, feel my share of blame in this vex- 
atious business, for I saw the unlucky paragraph 
in my brother's letter ; and I had a kind of 
foreboding that it would come to your mother's 
ears, although I had a higher idea of your 
brother's good sense than I find he deserved. 
By entreaties and prayer I might have prevailed 
on my brother to say nothing about it. But I 
make a point of conscience never to interfere or 
cross my brother in the humor he happens to be 
in. It always appears to me to be a vexatious 
kind of tyranny that women have no business 
to exercise over men, which, merely because, 
they having a better judgment^ they have power to 
do. / Let men alone and at last we find they 
come round to the right way which we, by a 
kind of intuition, perceive at once./ But, better, 
far better that we should let them often do 
wrong than that they should have the torment 
of a monitor always at their elbows. 

'* Charles is sadly fretted now, I know, at 
what to say to your mother. I have made this 
long preamble about it to induce you, if possible, 
to reinstate us in your mother's good graces. 



124 MARY LAMB, 

Say to her it was a jest misunderstood ; tell her 
Charles Lamb is not the shabby fellow she and 
her son took him for, but that he is, now and 
then, a trifle whimsical or so. I do not ask 
your brother to do this, for I am offended with 
him for the mischief he has made. 

"I feel that I have too lightly passed over 
the interesting account you sent me of your 
late disappointment. It was not because I did 
not feel and completely enter into the affair 
with you. You surprise and please me with 
the frank and generous way in which you deal 
with your lovers, taking a refusal from their so 
prudential hearts with a better grace and more 
good humor than other women accept a suitor's 
service. Continue this open, artless conduct, 
and I trust you will at last find some man who 
has sense enough to know you are well worth 
risking a peaceable life of poverty for. I shall 
yet live to see you a poor but happy English 
wife. 

" Remember me most affectionately to Coler- 
idge, and I thank you again and again for all 
your kindness to him. To dear Mrs. Stoddart 
and your brother I beg my best love ; and to 
you all I wish health and happiness and a soon 
return to old England. 

" I have sent to Mr. Burrel's for your kind, 
present, but unfortunately he is not in town. I 



COLERIDGE'S WANDERINGS, 12$ 

am impatient to see my fine silk handkerchiefs, 
and I thank you for them not as a present, for I 
do not love presents, but as a remembrance of 
your old friend. Farewell. 
" I am, my best Sara, 

'' Your most affectionate friend, 

"Mary Lamb." 

" Good wishes and all proper remembrances 
from old nurse, Mrs. Jeffries, Mrs. Reynolds, 
Mrs. Rickman, etc. Long live Queen Hoop- 
oop-oop-oo and all the old merry phantoms." 

Sara Stoddart returned to England before 
the year was out. Coleridge remained in Mal- 
ta, filling temporarily, at the request of Sir Al- 
exander Ball, Governor of the island, the post 
of Public Secretary till the end of September, 
1805, when his friends lost track of him alto- 
gether for nearly a year ; during which he vis- 
ited Paris, wandered through Italy, Sicily, Cairo, 
and saw Vesuvius in December, when " the air 
was so consolidated with a massy cloud-curtain 
that it appeared like a mountain in basso-relievo 
in an interminable wall of some pantheon ; ". 
and after narrowly escaping imprisonment at the 
hands of Napoleon, suddenly reappeared amongst 
his friends in the autumn of 1806. 

To the Wordsworth s, brother and sister and 
young wife — for the three were one in heart — 



126 MARY LAMB. 

this year of 1805 had been one of overwhelming 
sorrow. Their brother John, the brave and able 
ship's captain, who yet loved "all quiet things" 
as dearly as William, '' although he loved more 
silently," and was wont to carry that beloved 
brother's poems to sea and con them to the 
music of the winds and waves ; whose cherished 
scheme, so near fulfilment, it was to realize 
enough to settle in a cottage at Grasmere and 
devote his earnings to the poet's use, so that he 
might pursue his way unharassed by a thought 
of money, — this brother was shipwrecked on 
the Bill of Portland just as he was starting, and 
whilst the ship was yet in the pilot's hands, on 
what was to have been, in how different a sense, 
his last voyage. 

Six weeks beneath the moving sea 

He lay in slumber quietly, 

Unforced by wind or wave 

To quit the ship for which he died 

(All claims of duty satisfied) ; 

And there they found him at her side, 

And bore him to the grave. 

After waiting a while in silence before a 
grief of such magnitude, Mary wrote to Doro- 
thy Wordsworth. She speaks as one acquainted 
with a life-long sorrow, yet who has learned to 
find its companionship not bitter : — 

" I thank you, my kind friend, for your most 



LETTER TO DOROTHY. 1 27 

comfortable letter ; till I saw your own hand- 
writing I could not persuade myself that I 
should do well to write to you, though I have 
often attempted it ; but I always left off dissat- 
isfied with what I had written, and feeling that 
I was doing an improper thing to intrude upon 
your sorrow. I wished to tell you that you 
would one day feel the kind of peaceful state of 
mind and sweet memory of the dead which you 
so happily describe as now almost begun ; but 
I felt that it was improper and most grating to 
the feeling of the afflicted to say to them that 
the memory of their affliction would in time be- 
come a constant part, not only of their dream, 
but of their most wakeful sense of happiness. 
That you would see every object with and 
through your lost brother, and that that would 
at last become a real and everlasting source of 
comfort to you, I felt and well knew from my 
own experience in sorrow ; but till you yourself 
began to feel this I didn't dare tell you so ; but 
I send you some poor lines which I wrote under 
this conviction of mind and before I heard 
Coleridge was returning home. I will tran- 
scribe them now, before I finish my letter, lest 
a false shame prevent me then, for I know they 
are much worse than they ought to be, written 
as they were with strong feeling and on such a 
subject ; every line seems to me to be bor- 



128 MARY LAMB, 

rowed ; but I had no better way of expressing 
my thoughts, and I never have the power of 
altering or amending anything I have once laid 
aside with dissatisfaction : — 

Why is he wandering on the sea? 

Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be. 

By slow degrees he'd steal away 

Their woe and gently bring a ray 

(So happily he'd time relief) 

Of comfort from their very grief. 

He'd tell them that their brother dead, 

When years have passed o'er their head, 

Will be remembered with such holy, 

True and perfect melancholy, 

That ever this lost brother John 

Will be their heart's companion. 

His voice they'll always hear, 

His face they'll always see ; 

There's naught in life so sweet 

As such a memory. 

Thus for a moment are we permitted to see 
that, next to love for her brother, the memory 
of her dead mother and friendship for Coleridge 
were the deep and sacred influences of Mary's 
life. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Mary in the Asylum again. — Lamb's Letter witli a Poem 
of hers. — Her slow Recovery. — Letters to Sara Stod- 
dart. — The Tales from Shakespeare begun. — Haz- 
litt's Portrait of Lamb. — Sara's Lovers. — The Farce 
of Mr, H. 

1805-6. — ^t. 41-2. 

The letter to Miss Wordsworth called forth a 
response ; but, alas ! Mary was in sad exile when 
it arrived, and Charles, with a heart full of 
grief, wrote for her : — 

"14TH June, 1805. 
" Your long, kind letter has not been thrown 
away (for it has given me great pleasure to find 
you are all resuming your old occupations and 
are better) ; but poor Mary, to whom it is 
addressed, cannot yet relish it. She has been 
attacked by one of her severe illnesses and is at 
present from home. Last Monday week was 
the day she left me, and I hope I may calculate 
upon having her again in a month or little more. 
I am rather afraid late hours have, in this case, 
contributed to her indisppsitio|i. ... I have 

5 



130 MARY LAMB. 

every reason to suppose that this illness, like 
all the former ones, will be but temporary ; but 
I cannot always feel so. Meantime she is dead 
to me, and I miss a prop. All my strength is 
gone, and I am like a fool, Bereft of her cooper- 
ation. I dare not think lest I should think 
wrong, so used am I to look up to her in the 
least as in the biggest perplexity. To say all 
that I know of her would be more than I think 
anybody could believe or even understand ; and 
when I hope to have her well again with me it 
would be sinning against her feelings to go 
about to praise her, for I can conceal nothing 
that I do from her. She is older and wiser and 
better than I, and all my wretched imperfections 
I cover to myself by resolutely thinking on her 
goodness. She would share life and death, 
Heaven and hell, with me. She lives but for 
me ; and I know I have been wasting and teas- 
ing her life for five years past incessantly with 
my cursed drinking and ways of going on. But 
even in this upbraiding of myself I am offend- 
ing against her, for I know that she has clung 
to me for better for worse ; and if the balance 
has been against her hitherto it was a noble 
trade. . . . 

"I cannot resist transcribing three or four 
lines which poor Mary made upon a picture (a 
' Hply Family ') which we saw at an auction only 



CHARLES TO DOROTHY. 131 

one week before she left home. She was then 
beginning to show signs of ill boding. They 
are sweet lines, and upon a sweet picture ; but 
I send them only as the last memorial of her : — 

Virgin and Child, L. da Vinci. 

Maternal lady, with thy virgin grace, 
Heaven-born thy Jesus seemeth sure. 

And thou a virgin pure. 
Lady most perfect, when thy angel face 
Men look upon, they wish to be 
A Catholic, Madonna fair, to worship thee. 

" You had her lines about the ' Lady Blanch.' 
You have not had some which she wrote upon 
a copy of a girl from Titian, which I had hung 
up where that print of Blanch and the Abbess 
(as she beautifully interpreted two female fig- 
ures from L. da Vinci) had hung in our room. 
'Tis light and pretty : — 

Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place 

Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace 1 

Come, fair and pretty, tell to me 

Who in thy life-time thou might'st be ? 

Thou pretty art and fair. 

But with the Lady Blanch thou never must compare. 

No need for Blanch her history to tell; 

Whoever saw her face, they there did read it well; 

But when I look on thee, I only know 

There lived a pretty maid some hundred years ago. 

" This is a little unfair, to tell so much about 
ourselves and to advert so little to your letter, 



132 MARY LAMB. 

SO full of comfortable tidings of you all. But 
my own cares press pretty close upon me and 
you can make allowances. That you may go on 
gathering strength and peace is my next wish 
to Mary's recovery. 

*' I had almost forgot your repeated invitation. 
Supposing that Mary will be well and able, 
there is another ability which you may guess at 
which I cannot promise myself. In prudence 
we ought not to come. This illness will make 
it still more prudential to wait. It is not a bal- 
ance of this way of spending our money against 
another way, but an absolute question of 
whether we shall stop now or go on wasting 
away the little we have got beforehand, which 
my wise conduct has already encroached upon 
one-half." 

Pity it is that the little poem on the " Lady 
Blanch " should have perished, as I fear it has, 
if it contained as " sweet lines " as the fore- 
going. 

Little more than a month after this (July 27) 
Charles writes cheerfully to Manning : — - 

*' My old housekeeper has shown signs of 
convalescence and will shortly resume the 
power of the keys, so I shan't be cheated of my 
tea and liquors. Wind in the west, which pro- 
motes tranquillity. Have leisure now to antici- 



CHARLES TO DOROTHY. 1 33 

pate seeing thee again. Have been taking 
leave [it was a very short leave] of tobacco in a 
rhyming address. Had thought that vein had 
long since closed up. Find I can rhyme and 
reason too. Think of studying mathematics to 
restrain the fire of my genius, which George 
Dyer recommends. Have frequent bleedings 
at the nose, which shows plethoric. Maybe 
shall try the sea myself, that great scene of 
wonders. Got incredibly sober and regular ; 
shave oftener and hum a tune to signify cheer- 
fulness and gallantry. 

" Suddenly disposed to sleep, having taken a 
quart of peas with bacon and stout. Will not 
refuse Nature, who has done such things for 
me ! 

" Nurse ! don't call me unless Mr. Manning 

comes. — What ! the gentleman in spectacles ? 

— Yes. 

^^ Dormit. C. L. 

" Saturday, hot noon." 

But although Mary was sufficiently recovered 
to return home at the end of the summer, she 
continued much shaken by the severity of this 
attack, and so also did her brother all through 
the autumn ; as the following letters to Sara 
Stoddart, and still more one already quoted (pp. 
99-100), show : — 



134 MARY LAMB. 

"September, 1805. 

** Certainly you are the best letter- writer 
(besides writing the best hand) in the world. 
I have just been reading over again your two 
long letters and I perceive they make me very 
envious. I have taken a brand-new pen and put 
'on my spectacles, and am peering with all my 
might to see the lines in the paper, which the 
sight of your even lines had well-nigh tempted 
me to rule ; and I have moreover taken two 
pinches of snuff extraordinary to clear my head, 
which feels more cloudy than common this fine, 
cheerful morning. 

"All I can gather from your clear and, I have 
no doubt, faithful history of Maltese politics is 
that the good doctor, though a firm, friend, an 
excellent fancier of brooches, a good husband, 
an upright advocate, and, in short, all that they 
say upon tombstones (for I do not recollect that 
they celebrate any fraterAal virtues there), — 
yet is he but a moody brother ; that your sister- 
in-law is pretty much like what all sisters-in- 
law have been since the first happy invention 
of the marriage state ; that friend Coleridge has 
undergone no alteration by crossing the Atlan- 
tic [geography was evidently no part of Captain 
Starkey's curriculum], for his friendliness to 
you as well as the oddities you mention are just 
what one ought to look for from him ; and that 



LETTER TO SARA STODDART. 1 35 

you, my dear Sara, have proved yourself just as 
unfit to flourish in a Httle proud garrison town 
as I did shrewdly suspect you were before you 
went there. 

" If I possibly can I will prevail upon Charles 
to write to your brother by the conveyance you 
mention ; but he is so unwell I almost fear the 
fortnight will slip away before I can get him in 
the right vein. Indeed, it has been sad and 
heavy times with us lately. When I am pretty 
welLhis low spirits throw me back again ; and 
when he begins to get a little cheerful, then I 
do the same kind office for him. I heartily 
wish for the arrival of Coleridge ; a few such 
evenings as we have sometimes passed with 
him would wind us up and set us going again. 

" Do not say anything when you write of our 
low spirits ; it will vex Charles. You would 
laugh or you would cry, perhaps both, to see us 
sit together looking at each other with long and 
rueful faces, and saying ' How do you do } ' and 
' How do you do .'* ' then we fall a-crying and 
say we will be better on the morrow. He says 
we are like toothache, and his friend gum-boil, 
which, though a kind of ease, is but an uneasy 
kind of ease, a comfort of rather an uncomforta- 
ble sort. 

"I rejoice to hear of your mother's amend- 
ment ; when you can leave her with any satis- 



136 MARY LAMB. 

faction to yourself — which, as her sister, I 
think I understand by your letter, is with her, 
I hope you may soon be able to do — let me 
know upon what plan you mean to come to 
town. Your brother proposed your being six 
months in town and six with your mother; but 
he did not then know of your poor mother's ill- 
ness. By his desire I inquired for a respectable 
family for you to board with, and from Captain 
Burney I heard of one I thought would suit you 
at that time. He particularly desires I would 
not think of your being with us, not thinking, I 
conj ecture, the house of a single man respectable 
enough. Your brother gave me most unlimited 
orders to domineer over you, to be the in- 
spector of all your actions, and to direct and 
govern you with a stern voice and a high hand ; 
to be, in short, a very elder brother over you. 
Does the hearing of this, my meek pupil, make 
you long to come to London 1 I am making all 
the proper inquiries, against the time, of the 
newest and most approved modes (being myself 
mainly ignorant in these points) of etiquette 
and nicely-correct, maidenly manners. 

"But to speak seriously. I mean, when we 
meet, that we will lay our heads together and 
consult and contrive the best way of making 
the best girl in the world the fine lady her 
brother wishes to see her ; and believe me, Sara, 



LETTER TO SARA STODDART 13/ 

it is not so difficult a matter as one is apt to 
imagine. I have observed many a demure lady 
who passes muster admirably well, who, I think, 
we could easily learn to imitate in a week or 
two. We will talk of these things when we 
meet. In the meantime I give you free leave 
to be happy and merry at Salisbury in any way 
you can. Has the partridge season opened any 
communication between you and William t As 
I allow you to be imprudent till I see you, I 
shall expect to hear you have invited him to 
taste his own birds. Have you scratched him 
out of your will yet } Rickman is married, and 
that is all the news I have to send you. I seem, 
upon looking over my letter again, to have writ- 
ten too lightly of your distresses at Malta ; but 
however I may have written, believe me I enter 
very feelingly into all your troubles. I love you 
and I love your brother ; and between you, both 
of whom, I think, have been to blame, I know 
not what to say ; only this I say, try to think as 
little as possible of past miscarriages ; it was 
perhaps so ordered by Providence that you 
might return home to be a comfort to your 
mother." 

No long holiday trip was to be ventured on 
while Mary continued thus shaken and de- 
pressed. "We have been to two tiny excur- 
sions this summer, for three or four days each. 



138 MARY LAMB. 

to a place near Harrow and to Egham, where 
Cooper's Hill is, and that is the total history of 
our rustication this year," Charles tells Words- 
worth. In October Mary gives a slightly better 
account of herself : — 

"I have made many attempts* at writing to 
you, but it has always brought your troubles and 
my own so strongly into my mind, that I have 
been obliged to leave off and make Charles 
write for me. I am resolved now, however few 
lines I write, this shall go ; for I know, my kind 
friend, you will like once more to see my own 
handwriting. 

" I have been for these few days past in 
rather better spirits, so that I begin almost to 
feel myself once more a living creature and to 
hope for happier times ; and in that hope I 
include the prospect of once more seeing my 
dear Sara in peace and comfort in our old gar- 
ret. How did I wish for your presence to cheer 
my drooping heart when I returned home from 
banishment ! 

"Is your being with or near your poor dear 
mother necessary to her comfort } Does she 
take any notice of you } And is there any pros- 
pect of her recovery .? How I grieve for her, for 
you ! . . . 

"I went to the Admiralty, about your 
mother's pension ; from thence I was directed 



LETTER TO SARA STODDART 139 

to an office in Lincoln's Inn. . . . They 
informed me it could not be paid to any person 
but Mr, Wray without a letter of attorney. . . . 
Do not let us neglect this business, and make 
use of me in any way you can. 

"I have much to thank you and your kind 
brother for. I kept the dark silk, as you may 
suppose. You have made me very fine ; the 
brooch is very beautiful. Mrs. Jeffries wept 
for gratitude when she saw your present ; she 
desires all manner of thanks and good wishes. 
Your maid's sister has gone to live a few miles 
from town. Charles, however, found her out 
and gave her the handkerchief. 

*' I want to know if you have seen William 
and if there is any prospect in future there. 
All you said in your letter from Portsmouth 
that related to him was so burnt in the fumigat- 
ing that we could only make out that it was 
unfavorable, but not the particulars ; tell us 
again how you go on or if you have seen him. 
I conceit affairs will somehow be made up 
between you at last. 

" I want to know how your brother goes on. 
Is he likely to make a very good fortune, and in 
how long a time.-' And how is he in the way of 
home comforts — I mean is he very happy with 
Mrs. Stoddart t This was a question I could 
not ask while you were there, and perhaps is 



140 MARY LAMB. 

not a fair one now; but I want to know how 
you all went on, and, in short, twenty little 
foolish questions, that one ought, perhaps, 
rather to ask when we meet than to write 
about. But do make me a little acquainted 
with the inside of the good doctor's house and 
what passes therein. 

^' Was Coleridge often with you ? or did your 
brother and Col. argue long arguments, till 
between the two great arguers there grew a 
little coolness } or perchance the mighty friend- 
ship between Coleridge and your sovereign 
Governor, Sir Alexander Ball, might create a 
kind of jealousy ; for we fancy something of a 
coolness did exist, from the little mention of C. 
ever made in your brother's letters. 

" Write us, my good girl, a long, gossiping 
letter answering all these foolish questions — 
and tell me any silly thing you can recollect ; 
any, the least particular, will be interesting to 
us, and we will never tell tales out of school ; 
but we used to wonder and wonder how you all 
went on ; and when you was coming home we 
said, 'Now we shall hear all from Sara.' 

" God bless you, my dear friend. . . If 
you have sent Charles any commissions he has 
not executed write me word — he says he has 
lost or mislaid a letter desiring him to inquire 
about a wig. Write two letters — one of busi- 



HAZLITT'S PORTRAIT OF LAMB. 141 

ness and pensions and one all about Sara Stod- 
dart and Malta. 

*' We have got a picture of Charles ; do you 
think your brother would like to have it ? If 
you do, can you put us in a way how to send 
it ? " 

Mary's interest in her friend and her friend's 
affairs is so hearty one cannot choose but share 
it, and would gladly see what " the best letter- 
writer in the world " had to tell of Coleridge 
and Stoddart and the long arguments and little 
jealousies; and whether "William" had con- 
tinued to dangle on, spite of distance and dis- 
couragement ; and even to learn that the old 
lady received her pension and her wig in safety. 
But curiosity must remain unsatisfied, for none 
of Miss Stoddart's letters have been preserved. 

" The picture of Charles " was, we may feel 
pretty sure, one which William Hazlitt painted 
this year of Lamb " in the costume of a Vene- 
tian senator." It is, on all accounts, a peculiarly 
interesting portrait. Lamb was just thirty ; and 
it gives, on the whole, a striking impression of 
the nobility and beauty of form and feature 
which characterized his head, and partly realizes 
Proctor's description — ''a countenance so full 
of sensibility that it came upon you like a new 
thought which you could not help dwelling upon 
afterwards ; " though the subtle lines which 



142 MAJ^V LAMB. 

gave that wondrous sweetness of expression to 
the mouth are not fully rendered. Compared 
with the drawing by Hancock, done when Lamb 
was twenty-three, engraved in Cottle's Early 
Recollections of Coleridge, each may be said to 
corroborate the truth of the other, allowing for 
difference of age and aspect, — Hancock's being 
in profile, Hazlitt's (of which there is a good 
lithograph in Barry Cornwall's Memoir) nearly 
full-face. The print from it prefixed to Fitz- 
gerald's Lamb is almost unrecognizable. It was 
the last time Hazlitt took a brush in hand, his 
grandson tells us ; and it comes as a pleasant 
surprise — an indication that he was too modest 
in estimating his own gifts as a painter ; and 
that the freshness of feeling and insight he dis- 
. played as an art critic were backed by some 
capacity for good workmanship. 

It was whilst this portrait was being painted 
that the acquaintance between Lamb and Haz- 
litt ripened into an intimacy which, with one 
or two brief interruptions, was to be fruitful, 
invigorating on both sides and life-long. Haz- 
litt was at this time staying with his brother 
John, a successful miniature painter and a 
member of the Godwin circle, much frequented 
by the Lambs. 

" It is not well to be very poor, which we 
certainly are at this present," Mary had lately 



SA/^A'S MERITS AND DEMERITS, 1 43 

written. This it was which spurred her on to 
undertake her first Hterary venture, the Tales 
from Shakespeare. The nature of the malady 
from which she suffered made continuous men- 
tal exertion distressing and probably injurious ; 
so that without this spur she would never, we 
may be sure, have dug and planted her little 
plot in the field of literature, and made of it a 
sweet and pleasant place for the young, where 
they may play and be nourished, regardless of 
time and change. The first hint of any such 
scheme occurs in a letter to Sara Stoddart dated 
April 22, 1806, written the very day she had 
left the Lambs : — 

"I have heard that Coleridge was lately 
going through Sicily to Rome with a party ; 
but that, being unwell, he returned back to 
Naples. We think there is some mistake in 
this account and that his intended journey to 
Rome was in his former jaunt to Naples. If 
you know that at that time he had any such 
intention will you write instantly .-* for I do not 
know whether I ought to write to Mrs. Coler- 
idge or not. 

" I am going to make a sort of promise to 
myself and to you that I will write you kind of 
journal-like letters of the daily what-we-do mat- 
ters, as they occur. This day seems to me a 
kind of new era in our time. It is not a birth- 



144 MARY LAMB, 

day, nor a new year's day, nor a leave-off -smok- 
ing day ; but it-is about an hour after the time of 
leaving you, our poor Phoenix, in the Salisbury 
stage, and Charles has just left me to go to his 
lodgings [a room to work in free from the dis- 
traction of constant visitors, just hired experi- 
mentally], and I am holding a solitary consulta- 
tion with myself as to how I shall employ myself. 

*' Writing plays, novels, poems and all manner 
of such-like vaporing and vaporish schemes are 
floating in my head, which, at the same time, 
aches with the thought of parting from you, 
and is perplext at the idea of I cannot tell what- 
about notion that I have not made you half so 
comfortable as I ought to have done, and a 
melancholy sense of the dull prospect you have 
before you on your return home. Then I think 
I will make my new gown ; and now I consider 
the white petticoat will be better candle-light 
work ; and then I look at the fire and think 
if the irons was but down I would iron m.y 
gowns — you having put me out of conceit of 
mangling. 

So much for an account of my own confused 
head ; and now for yours. Returning home 
from the inn, we took that to pieces and can- 
vassed you, as you know is our usual custom. 
We agreed we should miss you sadly, and that 
you had been what you yourself discovered, not 



SARA'S MERITS AND DEMERITS. 145 

at all in our way ; and although, if the postmas- 
ter should happen to open this, it would appear 
to him to be no great compliment ; yet you, who 
enter so warmly into the interior of our affairs, 
will understand and value it as well as what we 
likewise asserted, that since you have been with 
us you have done but one foolish thing : vide 
Pinckhorn. (Excuse my bad Latin, if it should 
chance to mean exactly contrary to what I in- 
tend.) We praised you for the very friendly way 
in which you regarded all our whimsies, and, to 
use a phrase of Coleridge, understood us. We 
had, in short, no drawback on our eulogy on 
yotir merit except lamenting the want of respect 
you have to yourself, the want of a certain dig- 
nity of action (you know what I mean), which — 
though it only broke out in the acceptance of 
the old justice's book, and was, as it were, 
smothered and almost extinct while you were 
here — yet is it so native a feeling in your mind 
that you will do whatever the present moment 
prompts you to do, that I wish you would take 
that one slight offense seriously to heart, and 
make it a part of your daily consideration to 
drive this unlucky prop^ensity, root and branch, 
out of your character. Then, mercy on us, what 
a perfect little gentlewoman you will be ! ! ! 

"You are not yet arrived at the first stage of 
your journey; yet have I the sense of your 



146 MARY LAMB. 

absence so strong upon me that I was really 
thinking what news I had to send you, and what 
had happened since you had left us. Truly 
nothing, except that Martin Burney met us in 
Lincoln's Inn Fields and borrowed fourpence, 
of the repayment of which sum I will send you 
due notice. 

" Friday. — Last night I told Charles of your 
matrimonial overtures from Mr. White and of 
the cause of that business being at a standstill. 
Your generous conduct in acquainting Mr. 
White with the vexatious affair at Malta highly 
pleased him. He entirely approves of it. You 
would be quite comforted to hear what he said 
on the subject. 

"He wishes you success ; and when Coleridge 
comes will consult with him about what is best 
to be done. But I charge you be most strictly 
cautious how you proceed yourself. Do not 
give Mr. W. any reason to think you indiscreet ; 
let him return of his own accord and keep the 
probability of his doing so full in your mind ; so, 
I mean, as to regulate your whole conduct by 
that expectation. Do not allow yourself to see 
or in any way renew your acquaintance with 
William, nor do any other silly thing of that 
kind ; for you may depend upon it he will be a 
kind of spy upon you, and if he observes noth- 
ing that he disapproves of you will certainly 
hear of him again in time. 



THE FARCE. 147 

"Charles is gone to finish the farce {Mr. H.'\ 
and I am to hear it read this night. I am so 
uneasy between my hopes and fears of how I 
shall like it that I do not know what I am doing. 
I need not tell you so, for before I send this I 
shall be able to tell you all about it. If I think 
it will amuse you I will send you a copy. The 
bed was very cold last night. 

" I have received your letter and am happy 
to hear that your mother has been so well in 
your absence, which I wish had been prolonged 
a little, for you have been wanted to copy out 
the farce, in the writing of which I made many 
an unlucky blunder. 

" The said farce I carried (after many consult- 
ations of who was the most proper person to 
perform so important an office) to Wroughton, 
the manager of Drury Lane. He was very 
civil to me ; said it did not depend upon him- 
self, but that he would put it into the propri- 
etor's hands, and that we should certainly have 
an answer from them. 

" I have been unable to finish this sheet be- 
fore, for Charles has taken a week's holhday 
from his lodging to rest himself after his labor, 
and we have talked of nothing but the farce 
night and day; but yesterday I carried it to 
Wroughton, and since it has been out of the 
way our minds have been a little easier. I wish 



148 MARY LAMB. 

you had been with us to have given your opin- 
ion. I have half a mind to scribble another 
copy and send it you. I like it very much, and 
cannot help having great hopes of its success. 

" I would say I was very sorry for the death 
of Mr. White's father, but not knowing the good 
old gentleman, I cannot help being as well sat- 
isfied that he is gone, for his son will feel rather 
lonely, and so, perhaps, he may chance to visit 
again Winterslow. You so well describe your 
brother's grave lecturing letter that you make 
me ashamed of part of mine. I would fain 
rewrite it, leaving out my ^ sage advice;' but if 
I begin another letter something, may fall out 
to prevent me from finishing it, and, therefore, 
skip over it as well as you can ; it shall be t«ke 
last I ever send you. 

" It is well enough when one is talking to a 
friend to hedge in an odd word by way of coun- 
sel now and then ; but there is something mighty 
irksome in its staring upon one in a letter, 
where one ought only to see kind words and 
friendly remembrances. 

" I have heard a vague report from the Dawes 
(the pleasant-looking young lady we called upon 
was Miss Dawe) that Coleridge returned back to 
Naples ; they are to make further inquiries and 
let me know the particulars. We have seen 
little or nothing of Manning since you went. 



THE FARCE. 1 49 

Your friend George Burnet calls as usual for 
Charles to point oiU something for ki^n. I miss 
you sadly, and but for the fidget I have been in 
about the farce, I should have missed you still 
more. I am sorry you cannot get your money ; 
continue to tell us all your perplexities, and do 
not mind being called Widow Blackacre. 

** Say all in your mind about your lover ; now 
Charles knows of it, he will be as anxious to 
hear as me. All the time we can spare from 
talking of the characters and plot of the farce, 
we talk of you. I have got a fresh bottle of 
brandy to-day ; if you were here you should 
have a glass, three parts brandy^ so you should. 
I bought a pound of bacon to-day, not so good 
as yours. I wish the little caps were finished. 
I am glad the medicines and the cordials bore 
the fatigue of their journey so well. I promise 
you I will write often, and not mind the postage. 
God bless you. Charles does not send his love 
because he is not here. Write as often as ever 
you can. Do not work too hard." 

There is a little anecdote of Sara Stoddart, 
told by her grandson, which helps to mitigate 
our astonishment at Mary's too hospitable sug- 
gestion in regard to the brandy. Lieutenant 
Stoddart would sometimes, while sipping his 
grog, say to his children : " John, will you have 
some.'*" "No, thank you, father." "Sara, 



150 MAJ^Y LAMB. 

will you?" "Yes, please, father." "Not," 
adds Mr. Hazlitt, "that she ever indulged to 
excess, but she was that sort of woman." Very 
far, certainly, from "the perfect little gentle- 
woman" Mary hoped one day to see her; but 
friendly, not without brains, with a kindly heart, 
and her worst qualities such, surely, as spread 
themselves freely on the surface, but strike no 
deep or poisonous roots. " Do not mind being 
called Widow Blackacre," says Mary, alluding to 
one of the characters in Wycherley's Plain 
Dealer. It certainly was not gratifying to be 
likened to that " perverse, bustling, masculine 
pettifogging and litigious" lady, albeit Macaulay 
speaks of her as Wycherley's happiest creation. 

When Hazlitt returned to Wem, Lamb sent 
him his first letter full of friendly gossip : — 

" . . . We miss you, as we foretold we 
should. One or two things have happened 
which are beneath the dignity of epistolary 
communication, but which, seated about our 
fireside at night (the winter hands of pork have 
begun), gesture and emphasis might have 
talked into some importance. Something about 
Rickman's wife, for instance ; how tall she is, 
and that she visits pranked up like a Queen of 
the May with green streamers ; a good-natured 
woman though, which is as much as you can ex- 
pect from a friend's wife, whom you got ac- 



FIRST LETTER TO HAZLITT 151 

quainted with a bachelor. Something, too, 
about Monkey [Louisa Martin], which can't so 
well be written ; how it set up for a fine lady, 
and thought it had got lovers and was obliged 
to be convinced o£ its age from the parish reg- 
ister, where it was proved to be only twelve, 
and an edict issued that it should not give itself 
airs yet this four years ; and how it got leave to 
be called Miss by grace. These and such like 
hows were in my head to tell you, but who can 
write } Also how Manning is come to town in 
spectacles, and studies physic ; is melancholy, 
and seems to have something in his head 
which he don't impart. Then, how I am going 
to leave off smoking. . . . You disappoint 
me in passing over in absolute silence the Blen- 
heim Leonardo. Didn't you see it t Excuse a 
lover's curiosity. I have seen no pictures of 
note since, except Mr. Dawe's gallery. It is 
curious to see how differently two great men 
treat the same subject, yet both excellent in 
their way. For instance, Milton and Mr. Dawe. 
Mr. D. has chosen to illustrate the story of 
Samson exactly in the point of view in which 
Milton has been most happy : the interview 
between the Jewish hero, blind and captive, 
and Delilah. Milton has imagined his locks 
grown again, strong as horse-hair or porcu- 
pine's bristles ; doubtless shaggy and black, as 



152 MARY LAMB. 

being hairs * of which a nation armed contained 
the strength.' I don't remember he says black ; 
but could Milton imagine them to be yellow ? 
Do you ? Mr. Dawe, with striking originality 
of conception, has crowned him with a thin 
yellow wig ; in color precisely like Dyson's, in 
curl and quantity resembling Mrs. Professor's 
'(Godwin's wife) ; his limbs rather stout, about 
such a man as my brother or Rickman, but no 
Atlas nor Hercules, nor yet so long as Dubois, 
the clown of Sadler's Wells. This was judi- 
cious, taking the spirit of the story rather than 
the fact ; for doubtless God could communicate 
national salvation to the trust of flax and tow 
as well as hemp and cordage, and could draw 
down a temple with a golden tress as soon as 
with all the cables of the British navy. 

" Wasn't you sorry for Lord Nelson .-* I have 
followed him in fancy ever since I saw him in 
Pall Mall (I was prejudiced against him before), 
looking just as a hero should look, and I have 
been very much cut about it indeed. He was 
the only pretense of a great man we had. No- 
body is left of any name at all. His secretary 
died by his side. I imagined him, a Mr. Scott, 
to be the man you met at Hume's, but I learn 
from Mrs. Hume it is not the sam.e. . . . What 
other news is there, Mary } What puns have I 
made in the last fortnight 1 You never remem- 



FIRST LETTER TO HAZLITT. 1 53 

ber them. You have no relish for the comic. 
'Oh, tell Hazlitt not to forget to send the 
American Farmer. I dare say it's not as good 
as he fancies, but a book's a book.' "... 

Mary was no exclusive lover of her brother's 
•old folios, his " ragged veterans " and *' midnight 
darlings," but a miscellaneous reader with a 
decided leaning to modern tales and adventures 
— to "a story, well, ill or indifferently told, so 
there be life stirring in it," as Elia has told. 

It may be worth noting here that the Mr. 
Scott mentioned above, who was not the secre- 
tary killed by Nelson's side, was his chaplain, 
and, though not killed, he received a wound in 
the skull of so curious a nature as to cause occa- 
sionally a sudden suspension of memory. In 
the midst of a sentence he would stop abruptly, 
losing, apparently, all mental consciousness ; 
and after a lapse of time would resume at the 
very word with which he had left off, wholly 
unaware of any breach of continuity ; as one 
who knew him has often related to me. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Tales from Shakespeare. — Letters to Sara Stoddart. 
1806. — ^t. 42. 

Once begun, the Tales from Shakespeare were 
worked at with spirit and rapidity. By May 
loth Charles writes to Manning : — 

" [Mary] says you saw her writings about the 
other day, and she wishes you should know 
what they are. She is doing for Godwin's book- 
seller twenty of Shakespeare's plays, to be made 
into children's tales. Six are already done by 
her, to wit : The Tempest, A Winter s Tale, 
Midsummer Nighf s Dream, Much Ado about 
Nothing, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and 
Cymbeline. The Merchant of Venice is in for- 
wardness. I have done Othello and Macbeth, 
and mean to do all the tragedies. I think it 
will be popular among the little people, besides 
money. It is to bring in sixty guineas. Mary 
has done them capitally, I think you'd think." 

"Godwin's bookseller" was really Godwin 
himself, who at his wife's urgent entreaty had 



TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE. 155 

just started a "magazine" of children's books in 
Hanway street, hoping thus to add to his preca- 
rious earnings as an author. His own name 
was in such ill odor with the orthodox that he 
used his foreman's — Thomas Hodgkins — over 
the shop-door and on the title-pages, whilst the 
juvenile books which he himself wrote were 
published under the name of Baldwin. When 
the business was removed to Skinner street it 
was carried on in his wife's name. 

"My tales are to be published in separate 
story-books," Mary tells Sara Stoddart. "I 
mean in single stories, like the childr'en's little 
shilling books. I cannot send you them in 
manuscript, because they are all in the God- 
wins' hands; but one will be pubhshed very 
soon, and then you shall have it all in print, 
I go on very well, and have no doubt but I 
shall always be able to hit upon some such kind 
of job to keep going on. I think I shall get 
fifty pounds a year at the lowest calculation; 
but as I have not yet seen any money of my 
own earning (for we do not expect to be paid 
till Christmas), I do not feel the good fortune 
that has so unexpectedly befallen me half so 
much as I ought to do. But another year, no 
doubt, I shall perceive it. . . Charles has 
written Macbeth, Othello, . King Lear, and has 
begun Hamlet; you would like to see us, as we 



156 MARY LAMB. 

often sit writing on one table (but not on one 
cushion sitting), like Hermia and Helena in the 
Midsummer Night's Dreain; or rather, like an 
old literary Darby and Joan, I taking snuff and 
he groaning all the while and saying he can 
make nothing of it, which he always says till he 
has finished, and then he finds out he has made 
something of it. 

" If I tell you that you Widow Blackacre-ize 
you' must tell me I tale-izQ^ for my tales seem to 
be all the subject-matter I write about ; and 
when you see them you will think them poor 
little baby-stories to make such a talk about." 

And a month later she says : — *' The reason 
I have not written so long is that I worked and 
worked in hopes to get through my task before 
the holidays began ; but at last I was not able, 
for Charles was forced to get them nov/, or he 
could not have any at all ; and having picked 
out the best stories first, these latter ones take 
more time, being more perplext and unmanage- 
able. I have finished one to-day, which teazed 
me more than all the rest put together. They 
sometimes plague me as bad as your lovers do 
you. How do you go on, and how many new 
ones have you had lately .'* " 

" Mary is just stuck fast in All 's Well that. 
Ends Well,'' writes Charles. " She complains 
of having to set forth so many female characters 



TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE. 15/ 

in boys' clothes. She begins to think Shakes- 
peare must have wanted imagination ! I, to 
encourage her (for she often faints in the prose- 
cution of her great work), flatter her with 
telling how well such and such a play is done. 
But she is stuck fast, and I have been obliged to 
promise to assist her." 

At last Mary, in a postscript to her letter to 
Sara, adds: "I am in good spirits just at this 
present time, for Charles has been reading over 
the tale I told you plagued me so much, and he 
thinks it one of the very best. You must not 
mind the many wretchedly dull letters I have 
sent you ; for, indeed, I cannot help it ; my 
mind is always so wretchedly dry after poring 
over my work all day. But it will soon be over. 
I am cooking a shoulder of lamb (Hazlitt dines 
with us) ; it will be ready at 2 o'clock if you can 
pop in and eat a bit with us." 

Mary took a very modest estimate of her own 
achievement ; but time has tested it, and passed 
it on to generation after generation of children, 
and the last makes it as welcome as the first. 
Hardly a year passes but a new edition is 
absorbed ; and not by children only, but by the 
young generally, for no better introduction to 
the study of Shakespeare can be desired. Of 
the twenty plays included in the two small vol- 
umes which were issued in January, 1807, four- 



158 MARY LAMB. 

teen — The Tempest, A Midsummer Nighfs 
Dream, A Winter s Tale, Much Ado about 
Nothing, As You Like Lt, The Two Ge^itlemen 
of Veroita, The Merchant of Venice, Cymbeline, 
All 's Well that Ends Well, The Tami7ig of the 
Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, Measure for 
Measure, Twelfth Night, and Pericles, Prince of 
Tyre — were by Mary ; and the remaining six, 
the great tragedies, by Charles. Her share 
was the more difficult and the less grateful, not 
only on account of the more "perplext and 
unmanageable " plots of the comedies, but also 
of the sacrifices entailed in converting witty 
dialogue into brief narrative. But she ^^ con- 
stantly evinces a rare shrewdness and tact in 
her incidental criticisms, which show her to 
have been, in her way, as keen an observer of 
human nature as her brother," says Mr. Ainger 
in his preface to the Golden Treasury edition of 
the tales. "She" had "not lived so much 
among the wits and humorists of her day with- 
out learning some truths which helped her to 
interpret the two chief characters of Much Ado 
about Nothijig ; for instance : The hint Bea- 
trice gave Benedict that he was a coward, by 
saying she would eat all he had killed, he did 
not regard, knowing himself to be a brave man ; 
but there is nothing that great wits so much 
dread as the imputation of buffoonery, because 



THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 159 

the charge comes sometimes a little too near 
the truth ; therefore Benedict perfectly hated 
Beatrice when she called him the prince's 
jester." Very profound, too, is the casual 
remark upon the conduct of Claudio and his 
friends when the character of Hero is suddenly 
blasted — conduct which has often perplexed 
older readers for its heartlessness and insane 
credulity : " The prince and Claudio left the 
church without staying to see if Hero would 
recover, or at all regarding the distress into 
w^hich they had thrown Leonato, so hard-hearted 
had their anger made them'' 

If one must hunt for a flaw to show critical 
discernment, it is a pity that in Pericles, other- 
wise so successfully handled, with judicious 
ignoring of what is manifestly not Shakes- 
peare's, a beautiful passage is marred by the 
omission of a word that is the very heart of the 
simile : — 

See how she 'gins to blow into life's flower again, 

says Cerimon, as the seemingly dead Thaisa 
revives. " See, she begins to blow into life 
again," Mary has it. 

The tales appeared first in eight sixpenny 
numbers, but were soon collected in two small 
volumes "embellished," or, as it turned out, 
disfigured by twenty copper-plate illustrations, 



l6o MARY LAMB. 

of which, as of other attendant vexations, Lamb 
complains in a letter to Wordsworth, dated Jan- 
uary 29, 1 807 : — 

"We have booked off from the 'Swan and 
Two Necks,' Lad Lane, this day (per coach), 
the Tales from Shakespeare. You will forgive 
the plates, when I tell you they were left to the 
direction of Godwin, who left the choice of sub- 
jects to the bad baby [Mrs. Godwin], who from 

mischief (I suppose) has chosen one from d d 

beastly vulgarity (vide Merck. Venice), when no 
atom of authority was in the tale to justify it; 
to another, has given a name which exists not 
in the tale, Nic Bottom, and which she thought 
would be funny, though in this I suspect his 
hand, for I guess her reading does not reach 
far enough to know Bottom's Christian name ; 
and one of Hamlet and grave-digging, a scene 
which is not hinted at in the story, and you 
might as well have put King Canute the Great, 
reproving his courtiers. The rest are giants 
and giantesses. Suffice it to save our taste and 
damn our folly, that we left all to a friend, W. 
G., who in the first place cheated me by putting 
a name to them which I did not mean, but do 
not repent, and- then wrote a puff about their 
simplicity, etc., to go with the advertisement as 
in my name ! Enough of this egregious dupery. 
I will try to abstract the load of teasing circum- 



THE ILLUSTRATIONS. l6r 

stances from the stories, and tell you that I am 
answerable for Lear^ Macbeth^ Timon^ Romeo^ 
Hamlet, Othello, for occasionally a tail-piece or 
correction of grammar, for none of the cuts and 
all of the spelling. The rest is my sister's. 
We think Pericles of hers the best, and Othello 
of mine ; but I hope all have some good. As 
You Like It, we like least. So much, only beg- 
ging you to tear out the cuts and give them to 
Johnny as * Mrs. Godwin's fancy ' ! ! 

" I had almost forgot my part of the preface 
begins in the middle of a sentence, in last but 
one page, after a colon, thus — 

: — which if they be happily so done, etc. 

The former part hath a mere feminine turn, and 
does hold me up something as an instructor to 
young ladies, but upon my modesty's honor I 
wrote it not. 

''Godwin told my sister that the 'baby' chose 
the subjects : a fact in taste." 

Mary's preface sets forth her aim and her dif- 
ficulties with characteristic good sense and sim- 
plicity. I have marked with a bracket the 
point at which, quite tired and out of breath, as 
it were, at the end of her labors, she put the 
pen into her brother's hand, that he might finish 
with a few decisive touches what remained to 
be said of their joint ui^dertaking : — 
6 



l62 MARY LAMB, 



PREFACE. 



The following tales are meant to be submitted 
to the young reader as an introduction to the 
study of Shakespeare, for which purpose his 
words are used whenever it seemed possible to 
bring them in ; and in whatever has been 
added to give them the regular form of a con- 
nected story, diligent care has been taken to 
select such words as might least interrupt the 
effect of the beautiful English tongue in which 
he wrote ; therefore, words introduced into our 
language since his time have been as far as 
possible avoided. 

In those tales which have been taken from 
the tragedies, as my young readers will per- 
ceive when they come to see the source from 
which these stories are derived, Shakespeare's 
own words, with little alteration, recur very 
frequently in the narrative as well as in the 
dialogue ; but in those made from the comedies 
I found myself scarcely ever able to turn his 
words into the narrative form ; therefore I fear 
in them I have made use of dialogue too fre- 
quently for young people not used to the dra- 
matic form of writing. But this fault — if it be, 
as I fear, a fault — has been caused by my 
earnest wish to give as much of Shakespeare's 
own words as possible ; and if the " He said'' 
and ^^ She saidy' the question and the reply, 



MAJ^V'S PREFACE. 163 

should sometimes seem tedious to their young 
ears, they must pardon it, because it was the 
only way I knew of in which I could give them 
a few hints and little foretastes of the great 
pleasure which awaits them in their elder years, 
when they come to the rich treasures from 
which these small and valueless coins are ex- 
tracted, pretending to no other merit than as 
faint and imperfect stamps of Shakespeare's 
matchless image. Faint and imperfect images 
they must be called, because the beauty of his 
language is too frequently destroyed by the 
necessity of changing many of his excellent 
words into words far less expressive of his true 
sense, to make it read something like prose ; 
and even in some few places where his blank 
verse is given unaltered, as hoping from its 
simple plainness to cheat the young readers 
into the belief that they are reading prose, yet 
still, his language being transplanted from its 
own natural soil and wild, poetic garden, it 
must want much of its native beauty. 

I have wished to make these tales easy read- 
ing for very young children. To the utmost of 
my ability I have constantly kept this in my 
mind; but the subjects of most of them made 
this a very difficult task. It was no easy mat- 
ter to give the histories of men and women in 
terms familiar to the apprehension of a very 



l64 MARY LAMB. 

young mind. For young ladies, too, it has been 
my intention chiefly to write, because boys are 
generally permitted the use of their fathers' 
libraries at a much earlier age than girls are, 
they frequently having the best scenes of 
Shakespeare by heart before their sisters are 
permitted to look into this manly book; and 
therefore, instead of recommending these tales 
to the perusal of young gentlemen who can 
read them so much better in the originals, I 
must rather beg their kind assistance in ex- 
plaining to their sisters such parts as are hard- 
est for them to understand ; and when they 
have helped them to get over the difficulties, 
then perhaps they will read to them — carefully 
selecting what is proper for a young sister's 
ear — some passage which has pleased them in 
one of these stories, in the very words of the 
scene from which it is taken. And I trust they 
will find that the beautiful extracts, the select 
passages, they may choose to give their sisters 
in this way will be much better relished and 
understood from their having some notion of 
the general story from one of these imperfect 
abridgments, which, if they be fortunately so 
done as to prove delightful to any of you, my 
young readers, I hope will have no worse effect 
upon you than to make you wish yourself a little 
older, that you may be allowed to read the plays 



MULREADY. 1 65 

at full length : such a wish will be neither peev- 
ish nor irrational. When time and leave of 
judicious friends shall put them into your 
hands, you will discover in such of them as are 
here abridged — not to mention almost as many 
more which are left untouched — many surpris- 
ing events and turns of fortune, which for their 
infinite variety could not be contained in this 
little book, besides a world of sprightly and 
cheerful characters, both men and women, the 
humor of which I was fearful of losing if I 
attempted to reduce the length of them. 

What these tales have been to you in child- 
hood, that and much more it is my wish that 
the true plays of Shakespeare may prove to you 
in older years — enrichers of the fancy, strength- 
eners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish 
and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet 
and honorable thoughts and actions, to teach 
you courtesy, benignity, generosity, humanity ; 
for of examples teaching these virtues his pages 
are full. 

If the ''bad baby" chose the subjects, a 
stripling who was afterwards to make his mark 
in art executed them : a young Irishman, son of 
a. leather-breeches maker, Mulready by name, 
whom Godwin and also Harris, Newberry's suc- 
cessor, were at this time endeavoring to help in 
his twofold struggle to earn a livelihood and 



1 66 MAJ^V LAMB. 

obtain some training in art (which he did chiefly 
in the studio of Banks, the sculptor). Some of 
his early illustrations to the rhymed satirical 
fables just then in vogue, such as The Butter- 
Jlys Ball and the Peacock at Home, show humor 
as well as decisive artistic promise. But the 
young designer seems to have collapsed alto- 
gether under the weight of Shakespeare's crea- 
tions ; and whoever looks at the goggle-eyed 
ogre of the pantomime species called Othello, 
as well as at the plates Lamb specifies, will not 
wonder at his disgust. Curiously enough they 
have been attributed to Blake — those in the 
edition of 1822, that is, which are identical with 
those of 1807 and 1816, — and as such figure in 
booksellers' catalogues, with a correspondingly 
high price attached to the volumes, notwith- 
standing the testimony to the contrary of Mr. 
Sheepshanks, given in Stephens' Masterpieces of 
Mulready. Engraved by Blake they may have 
been, and hence may have here and there 
traces of Blakelike feeling and character ; for 
though he was fifty at the time these were exe- 
cuted, he still and always had to win his bread 
more often by rendering with his graver the 
immature or brainless conceptions of others, 
than by realizing those of his own teeming and 
powerful imagination. 

The success of the tales was decisive and 
immediate. New editions were called for in 



MULREADY. ~ 167 

1810, 1816 and 1822; but in concession, no 
doubt, to Lamb's earnest remonstrances, only a 
certain portion of each contained the obnoxious 
plates ; the rest were issued with " merely a 
beautiful head of our immortal dramatist, from 
a much-admired painting by Zoust," as God- 
win's advertisement put it. Subsequently an 
edition, with designs by Harvey, remained long 
in favor and was reprinted many times. In 
1837, Robert, brother of the more famous 
George Cruikshank, illustrated the book, and 
there was prefixed a memoir of Lamb by J. W. 
Dalby, a friend of Leigh Hunt and contributor 
to the London Joitrnal. The Golden Treastiry 
edition, already spoken of, has a dainty little 
frontispiece by Du Maurier, with which Lamb 
would certainly have found no fault. 

No sooner were the Tales out of hand than 
Mary began a fresh task, as Charles tells Man- 
ning in a letter written at the end of the year 
(1806), wherein also is a glimpse of our friend 
Mr. Dawe, not to be here omitted : '' Mr. Dawe 
is turned author; he has been in such a way 
lately — Dawe the painter, I mean — he sits 
and stands about at Holcroft's and says noth- 
ing ; then sighs and leans his head on his hand. 
I took him to be in love ; but it seems he was 
only meditating a work, The Life of Morland. 
The young man is not used to composition." 



CHAPTER IX. 

Correspondence with Sara Stoddart. — Hazlitt.— A Court- 
ship and Wedding, at which Mary is Bridesmaid. 

1806-8. — JEt. 42-4. 

To return to domestic affairs, as faithfully 
reported to Sara by Mary whilst the Tales were 
in progress : — 

"May 14, 1806. 

" No intention of forfeiting my promise, but 
want of time has prevented me from continuing 
ray journal. You seem pleased with the long, 
stupid one I sent, and, therefore, I shall con- 
tinue to write at every opportunity. The rea- 
son why I have not had any time to spare is 
because Charles has given himself some holli- 
days after the hard labor of finishing his farce ; 
and, therefore, I have had none of the evening 
leisure I promised myself. Next week he 
promises to go to, work again. I wish he may 
happen to hit upon some new plan to his mind 
for another farce [Mr. If. was accepted, but not 



GOSSIP. 169 

yet brought out]. When once begun, I do not 
fear his perseverance, but the hollidays he has 
allowed himself I fear will unsettle him. I look 
forward to next week with the same kind of 
anxiety I did to the new lodging. We have 
had, as you know, so many teazing anxieties of 
late, that I have got a kind of habit of forebod- 
ing that we shall never be comfortable, and that 
he will never settle to work, which I know is 
wrong, and which I will try with all my might 
to overcome; for certainly if I could but see 
things as they really are, our prospects are con- 
siderably improved since the memorable day of 
Mrs. Fenwick's last visit. I have heard noth- 
ing of that good lady or of the Fells since you 
left us. 

"We have been visiting a little to Norris', 
Godwin's, and last night we did not co'me home 
from Captain Burney's till two o'clock ; the 
Saturday night was changed to Friday, because 
Rickman could not be there to-night. We had 
the best tea things, and the litter all cleared 
away, and everything as handsome as possible, 
Mrs. Rickman being of the party. Mrs. Rick- 
man is much increased in size since we saw 
her last, and the alteration in her strait shape 
wonderfully improves her. Phillips was there, 
and Charles had a long batch of cribbage with 
him, and upon the whole we had the most 



I/O MA/^y LAMB. 

chearful evening I have known there for a long 
time. To-morrow we dine at Holcroft's. These 
things rather fatigue me ; but I look for a quiet 
week next week and hope for better times. We 
have had Mrs. Brooks and all the Martins, and 
we have likewise been there, so that I seem to 
have been in a continual bustle lately. I do not 
think Charles cares so much for the Martins as 
he did, which is a fact you will be glad to hear, 
though you must not name them when you 
write ; always remember, when I tell you any- 
thing about them, not to mention their names 
in return. 

*'We have had a letter from your brother by 
the same mail as yours, I suppose ; he says he 
does not mean to return till summer, and that 
is all he says about himself ; his letter being 
entirely filled with a long story about Lord 
Nelson — but nothing more than what the 
papers have been full of — such as his last 
words, etc. Why does he tease you with so 
much good advice f Is it merely to fill up his 
letters, as he filled ours with Lord Nelson's 
exploits 1 or has any new thing come out against 
you t Has he discovered Mr. Curse-a-rat's cor- 
respondence } I hope you will not write to that 
news-sendmg gentleman any more. I promised 
never more to give my advice, but one may be 
allowed to hope a little ; and I also hope you 



GOSSIP. 171 

will have something to tell me soon about Mr. 
White. Have you seen him yet } I am sorry 
to hear your mother is not better, but I am in 
a hoping humor just now, and I cannot help 
hoping that we shall all see happier days. The 
bells are just now ringing for the taking of the 
Cape of Good Hope. 

" I have written to Mrs. Coleridge to tell her 
that her husband is at Naples. Your brother 
slightly named his being there, but he did not 
say that he had heard from him himself. 
Charles is very busy at the office ; he will be 
kept there to-day till seven or eight o'clock ; 
and he came home very smoky artd d^dnky last 
night, so that I am afraid a hard day's work 
will not agree very well with him. 

" O dear ! what shall I say next } Why, this 
I will say next, that I wish you was with me ; 
I have been eating a mutton chop all alone, 
and I have just been looking in the pint porter- 
pot, which I find quite empty, and yet I am 
still very dry. If you was with me we would 
have a glass of brandy and water ; but it is 
quite impossible to drink brandy and water by 
one's self ; therefore, I must wait with patience 
till the kettle boils. I hate to drink tea alone ; 
it is worse than dining alone. We have got a 
fresh cargo of biscuits from Captain Burney's. 
I have 



1/2 MARY LAMB. 

*'May 14. — Here I was interrupted, and a 
long, tedious interval has intervened, during 
which I have had neither time nor inclination 
to write a word. The lodging, that pride of 
your heart and mine, is given up, and he7^e he is 
again — Charles, I mean — as unsettled and 
undetermined as ever. When he went to the 
poor lodging after the holidays I told you he 
had taken, he cbuld not endure the solitariness 
otthem, and I had no rest for the sole of my 
foot till I promised to believe his solemn pro- 
testations that he could and would write as well 
at home as there. Do you believe this } 

" I have no power over Charles ; he will do 
what he will do. But I ought to have some 
little influence over myself ; and, therefore, I 
am most manfully resolving to turn over a new 
leaf with my own mind. Your visit, though 
not a very comfortable one to yourself, has 
been of great use to me. I set you up in my 
fancy as a kind of thing that takes an interest 
in my concerns ; and I hear you talking to me, 
and arguing the matter very learnedly, when I 
give way to despondency. You shall hear a 
good account of me and the progress I make in 
altering my fretful temper to a calm and quiet 
one. It is but once being thoroughly convinced 
one is wrong, to make one resolve to do so no 
more ; and I know my dismal faces have bsen 



HOME CARES. 1/3 

almost as great a drawback upon Charles' com- 
fort, as his feverish, teazing ways have been 
upon mine. Our love for each other has been 
the torment of our lives hitherto. I am most 
seriously intending to bend the whole force of 
my mind to counteract this, and I think I see 
some prospect of success. 

'^ Of Charles ever bringing any work to pass 
at home, I am very doubtful ; and of the farce 
succeeding, I have little or no hope ; but if I 
could once get into the way of being cheerful 
myself, I should see an easy remedy in leaving 
town and living cheaply, almost wholly alone ; 
but till I do find we really are comfortable 
alone, and by ourselves, it seems a dangerous 
experiment. We shall certainly stay where we 
are till after next Christmas ; and in the mean- 
time, as I told you before, all my whole thoughts 
shall be to chmtge myself into j ust such a cheer- 
ful soul as you would be in a lone house, with 
no companion but your brother, if you had 
nothing to vex you, nor no means of wander- 
ing after Curse-a-rats. Do wTite soon ; though 
I write all about myself, I am thinking all the 
while of you, and I am uneasy at the length of 
time it seems since I heard from you. Your 
mother and Mr. Whitens running continually 
in my head ; and this second wmter makes me 
think how cold, damp and forlorn your solitary 



174 MARY LAMB. 

house will feel to you. I would your feet were 
perched up again on our fender." . 

If ever a woman knew how to keep on the 
right side of that line which, in the close com- 
panionship of daily life, is so hard to find, the 
line that separates an honest, faithful friend 
from "a torment of a monitor," and could divine 
when and how to lend a man a helping hand 
against his own foibles, and when to forbear 
and wait patiently, that woman was Mary 
Lamb. 

Times were changed indeed since Lamb 
could speak of himself as " alone, obscure, with- 
out a friend." Now friends and acquaintances 
thronged round him, till rest and quiet were 
almost banished from his fire-side ; and though 
they were banished for the most part by social 
pleasures he dearly loved — hearty, simple, 
intellectual pleasures — the best of talk, with 
no ceremony and the least of expense, yet they 
had to be paid for by Mary and himself in 
fevered nerves, in sleep curtailed and endless 
interruptions to work. There were, besides, 
" social harpies who preyed on him for his 
liquors," whom he lacked firmness to shake off, 
in spite of those " dismal faces " consequent in 
Mary, of which she penitently accuses herself. 

Apart from external distractions, the effort 
to write, especially any sort of task-work, was 



HOME CARES. 1/5 

often so painful to his irritable nerves that, as 
he said, it almost ''teazed him into a fever," 
whilst Mary's anxious love and close sympathy 
made his distress her own. There is a letter 
to Godwin deprecating any appearance of un- 
friendliness in having failed to review his Life 
of Chaucer, containing a passage on this subject, 
which the lover of Lamb's writings and charac- 
ter (and who is one must needs be the other) 
will ponder with peculiar interest: — • 

" You, by long habits of composition and a 
greater command over your own powers, cannot 
conceive of the desultory and uncertain way in 
which I (an author by fits) sometimes cannot 
put the thoughts of a common letter into sane 
prose. Any work which I take upon myself as 
an engagement will act upon me to torment ; 
e. g. when I have undertaken, as three or four 
times I have, a school-boy copy of verses for 
merchant tailors' boys at a guinea a copy, I 
have fretted over them in perfect inability to 
do them, and have made my sister wretched 
with my wretchedness for a week together. 
As to reviewing, in particular, my head is so 
whimsical a head that I cannot, after reading 
another man's book, let it have been never so 
pleasing, give any account of it in any method- 
ical way. I cannot follow his train. Something 
like this you must have perceived of me in con- 



176 MARY LAMB. 

versation. Ten thousand times I have con- 
fessed to you, talking of my talents, my utter 
inability to remember, in any comprehensive 
way, what I read. I can vehemently applaud 
or perversely stickle at parts^ but I cannot grasp 
a whole. This infirmity may be seen in my 
two little compositions, the tale and my play, in 
both which no reader, however partial, can find 
any story. ... If I bring you a crude, 
wretched paper on Sunday, you must burn it 
and forgive me ; if it proves anything better 
than I predict, may it be a peace-offering of 
sweet incense between us." 

The two friends whose society was always 
soothing were far away now. Coleridge, who 
could always " wind them up and set them going 
again," as Mary said, was still wandering they 
knew not where on the Continent, and Manning 
had at last carried out a long-cherished scheme 
and gone to China for four years, which, how- 
ever, stretched to twelve, as Lamb prophesied 
it would. 

"I didn't know what your going was till I 
shook a last fist with you," says Lamb, "and 
then 'twas just like having shaken hands with a 
wretch on the fatal scaffold, for when you are 
down the ladder you never can stretch out to 
him again. Mary says you are dead, and 
there's nothing to do but to leave it to time to 



MANNING GOES TO CHINA, 1 7/ 

do for us in the end what it always does for 
those who mourn for people in such a case ; 
but she'll see by your letter you are not quite 
dead. A little kicking and agony, and then — 
Martin Burney took me out a-walking that even- 
ing, and we talked of Manning, and then I came 
home and smoked for you ; and at twelve o'clock 
came home Mary and Monkey Louisa from the 
play, and there was more talk and more smok- 
ing, and they all seemed first-rate characters 
because they knew a certain person. But 
what's the use of talking about 'em } By the 
time you'll have made your escape from the 
Kalmucks, you'll have stayed so long I shall 
never be able to bring to your mind who Mary 
was, who will have died about a year before, nor 
who the Holcrofts were. Me, perhaps, you will 
mistake for Phillips, or confound me with Mr. 
Dawe, because you saw us together. Mary, 
whom you seem to remember yet, is not quite 
easy that she had not a formal parting from you. 
I wish it had so happened. But you must bring 
her a token, a shawl or something, and remem- 
ber a sprightly little mandarin for our mantel- 
piece as a companion to the child I am going to 
purchase at the museum. . . . O Manning, 
I am serious to sinking, almost, when I think 
that all those evenings which you have made so 
pleasant are gone, perhaps forever. ... I 



1/8 MARY LAMB. 

will nurse the remembrance of your steadiness 
and quiet which used to infuse something like 
itself into our nervous minds. Mary used to 
call you our ventilator." 

Mary's next letters to Miss Stoddart continue 
to fulfil her promise of writing a kind of jour- 
nal : — 

" June 2nd. 

"You say truly that I have sent you too many 
make-believe letters. I do not mean to serve 
you so again if I can help, it. I have been very 
ill for some days past with the toothache. Yes- 
terday I had it drawn, and I feel myself greatly 
relieved, but far from being easy, for my head 
and my jaws still ache ; and being unable to do 
any business, I would wish to write you a long 
letter to atone for my former offenses; but I 
feel so languid that I fear wishing is all I 
can do. 

"I am sorry you are so worried with bus- 
iness, and I am still more sorry for your 
sprained ancle. You ought not to walk upon 
it. What is the matter between you and your 
good-natured maid you used to boast of } and 
what the devil is the matter with your aunt .? 
You say she is discontented. You must bear 
with them as well as you can, for doubtless it 
is your poor mother's teazing that puts you all 
out of sorts. I pity you from my heart. 



HAZLITT. 179 

"We cannot come to see you this summer, 
nor do I think it advisable to come and incom- 
mode you when you for the same expense could 
come to us. Whenever you feel yourself dis- 
posed to run away from your troubles, come 
to us again. I wish it was not such a long, 
expensive journey, and then you could run 
backwards and forwards every month or two. 
I am very sorry you still hear nothing from Mr. 
White. I am afraid that is all at an end. 
What do you intend to do about Mr. Turner ? 
. . . . William Hazlitt, the brother of him 
you know, is in town. I believe you have heard 
us say we like him. He came in good time, for 
the loss of Manning made Charles very dull, 
and he likes Hazlitt better than anybody, 
except Manning. My toothache has moped 
Charles to death ; you know how he hates to 
see people ill. 

" When I write again you will hear tidings 
of the farce, for Charles is to go in a few days 
to the managers to inquire about it. But that 
must now be a next year's business too, even 
if it does succeed, so it's all looking forward 
and no prospect of present gain. But that's 
better than no hopes at all, either for present 
or future times. . . . Charles smokes still, 
and will smoke to the end of the chapter. 
Martin [Burney] has just been here. My Tales 



l8o MARY LAMB. 

{again) and Charles' farce have made the boy 
mad to turn author, and he has made the Win- 
ters Tale into a story ; but what Charles says 
of himself is really true of Martin, for he can 
make nothing at all of it, and I have been talk- 
ing very eloquently this morning to convince 
him that nobody can write farces, etc., under 
thirty years of age ; and so I suppose he will 
go home and new-model his farce. 

'* What is Mr. Turner, and what is likely to 
come of him } And how do you like him ? 
And what do you intend to do about it ? I 
almost wish you to remain single till your 
mother dies, and then come and live with us, 
and we would either get you a husband or teach 
you how to live comfortably without. I think 
I should like to have you always., to the end of 
our lives, living with us ; and I do not know 
any reason why that should not be, except for 
the great fancy you seem to have for marrying, 
which after all is but a hazardous kind of affair ; 
but, however, do as you like ; every man knows 
best what pleases himself best. 

"I have known many single men I should 
have liked in my life i^f it had suited them) for 
a husband ; but very few husbands have I ever 
wished was mine, which is rather against the 
state in general ; but one never is disposed 
to envy wives their good husbands. So much 



HOME 'HOLIDA YS. 1 8 1 

for marrying — but, however, get married if 
you can. 

" I say we shall not come and see you, and I 
feel sure we shall not ; but if some sudden freak 
was to come into our wayward heads, could you 
at all manage ? Your mother we should not 
mind, but I think still it would be so vastly 
inconvenient. I am certain we shall not come, 
and yet you may tell me when you write if it 
would be horribly inconvenient if we did ; and 
do not tell me any lies, but say truly whether 
you would rather we did or not. 

" God bless you, my dearest Sara ! I wish 
for your sake I could haye written a very amus- 
ing letter ; but do not scold, for my head aches 
sadly. Don't mind my headache, for before 
you get this it will be well, being only from the 
pains of my jaws and teeth. Farewell." 

"July 2nd. 

" Charles and Hazlitt are going to Sadler's 
Wells, and I am amusing myself in their 
absence with reading a manuscript of Hazlitt's, 
but have laid it down to write a few lines to tell 
you how we are going on. Charles has begged 
a month's hollidays, of which this is the first 
day, and they are all to be spent at home. We 
thank you for your kind invitations, and were 
half inclined to come down to you ; but after 



1 82 mAjRv lamb. 

mature deliberation and many wise consulta- 
tions — such as you know we often hold — we 
came to the resolution of staying quietly at 
home, and during the hollidays we are both of 
us to set stoutly to work and finish the tales. 
We thought if we went anywhere and left them 
undone they would lay upon our minds, and that 
when we returned we should feel unsettled, and 
our money all spent besides ; and next summer 
we are to be very rich, and then we can afford 
a long journey somewhere ; I will not say to 
Salisbury, because I really think it is better for 
you to come to us. But of that we will talk 
another time. 

*' The best news I have to send you is that 
the farce is accepted ; that is to say, the man- 
ager has written to say it shall be brought out 
when an opportunity serves. I hope that it 
may come out by next Christmas. You must 
come and see it the first night ; for if it suc- 
ceeds it will be a great pleasure to you, and if it 
should not we shall want your consolation ; so 
you must come. 

" I shall soon have done my work, and know 
not what to begin next. Now, will you set 
your brains to work and invent a story, either 
for a short child's story, or a long one that 
would make a kind of novel, or a story that 
would make a play } Charles wants me to write 



HOME 'H OLID A YS. 1 83 

a play, but I am not over-anxious to set about 
it. But, seriously, will you draw me out a 
sketch of a story, either from memory of any- 
thing you have read, or from your own inven- 
tion, and I will fit it up in some way or 
other ? . . . 

"I met Mrs. Fenwick at Mrs. Holcroft's the 
other day. She looked placid and smiling, but 
I was so disconcerted that I hardly knew how 
to sit upon my chair. She invited us to come 
and see her, but we did not invite her in return, 
and nothing at all was said in an explanatory 
sort, so that matter rests for the present.'* 
[Perhaps the little imbroglio was the result of 
some effort on Mary's part to diminish the fre- 
quency of the undesirable Mr. Fenwick's visits. 
He was a good-for-nothing ; but his wife's name 
deserves to be remembered because she nursed 
Mary Wollstonecraft tenderly and devotedly in 
her last illness.] "I am sorry you are alto- 
gether so uncomfortable; I shall be glad to 
hear you are settled at Salisbury ; that must be 
better than living in a lone house, companion- 
less, as you are. I wish you could afford to 
bring your mother up to London, but that is 
quite impossible. Mrs. Wordsworth is brought 
to bed, and I ought to write to Miss Words- 
worth and thank her for the information, but I 
suppose I shall defer it till another child is 



184 MARY LAMB. 

coming. I do so hate writing letters. I wish all 
my friends would come and live in town. It is 
not my dislike to writing letters that prevents 
my writing to you, but sheer want of time, I 
assure you ; because you care not how stupidly 
I write so as you do but hear at the time what 
we are about. 

" Let me hear from you soon, and do let me 
hear some good news, and don't let me hear of 
your walking with sprained ancles again ; no 
business is an excuse for making yourself 
lame. 

" I hope your poor mother is better, and 
auntie and maid jog on pretty well; remem- 
ber me to them all in due form and order. 
Charles' love and our best wishes that all your 
little busy affairs may come to a prosperous 
conclusion." 

"Friday Evening. 

"They (Ha^litt and Charles) came home from 
Sadler's Wells so dismal and dreary dull on 
Friday evening that I gave them both a good 
scolding, qtiite a setting to rights ; and I think 
it has done some good, for Charles has been 
very chearful ever since. I begin to hope the 
home hollidays will go on very well. Write 
directly, for I am uneasy about your Lovers ; 
I wish something was settled. God bless 
you." ... 



SARA'S LOVERS. 1 85 

Sara's lovers continued a source of lively if 
" uneasy " interest to Mary. The enterprising 
young lady had now another string to her bow ; 
indeed, matters this time went so far that the 
question of settlements was raised, and Mary 
wrote a letter, in which her " advising spirit " 
shows itself as wise as it was unobtrusive, as 
candid as it was tolerant. Dr. Stoddart clearly 
estimated her judgment and tact, after his 
fashion, as highly as Coleridge and Wordsworth 
did after theirs. Mary wrote : — 

" October 22. 

*' I thank you a thousand times for the beau- 
tiful work you have sent me. I received the 
parcel from a strange gentleman yesterday. I 
like the patterns very much. You have quite 
set me up in finery ; but you should have sent 
the silk handkerchief too; will you make a par- 
cel of that and send it by the Salisbury coach } 
I should like to have it for a few days, because 
we have not yet been to Mr. Babb's, and that 
handkerchief would suit this time of year 
nicely. I have received a long letter from your 
brother on the subject of your intended mar- 
riage. I have no doubt but you also have one 
on this business ; therefore it is needless to 
repeat what he says. I am well pleased to find 
that, upon the whole, he does not seem to see 



1 86 MARY LAMB, 

it in an unfavorable light. He says that if Mr. 
Dowling is a worthy man, he shall have no 
objection to become the brother of a farmer; 
and he makes an odd request to me, that I shall 
set. out to Salisbury to look at and examine into 
the merits of the said Mr. D., and speaks very 
confidently, as if you would abide by my deter- 
mination. A pretty sort of an office, truly ! 
Shall I come.-* The objections he starts are 
only such as you and I have already talked 
over — such as the difference in age, education, 
habits of life, etc. 

** You have gone too far in this affair for any 
interference to be at all desirable ; and if you 
had not, I really do not know what my wishes 
would be. When you bring Mr. Dowling at 
Christmas I suppose it vv^ill be quite time 
enough for me to sit in judgment upon him ; 
but my examination will not be a very severe 
one. If you fancy a very young man and he 
likes an elderly gentlewoman; if he likes a 
learned and accomplished lady and you like a 
not very learned youth who may need a little 
polishing, which probably he will never ac- 
quire, — it is all very well, and God bless you 
both together, and may you be both very long 
in the same mind ! 

" I am to assist you too, your brother says, in 
drawing up the marriage settlements ; another 



GOOD ADVICE. - 187 

thankful office! I am not, it seems, to suffer 
you to keep too much money in your own 
power, and yet I am to take care of you in case 
of bankruptcy ; and I am to recommend to you, 
for the better management of this point, the 
serious perusal oi Jeremy Taylor, his opinion on 
the marriage state, especially his advice against 
separate interests in that happy state ; and I am 
also to tell you how desirable it is that the hus- 
band should have the entire direction of all 
money concerns, except, as your good brother 
adds, in the case of his own family, when the 
money, he observes, is very properly deposited 
in Mrs. Stoddart's hands, she being better 
suited to enjoy such a trust than any other 
woman ; and therefore it is fit that the general 
rule should not be extended to her. 

*'We will talk over these things when you 
come to town ; and as to settlements, which are 
matters of which I — I never having had a 
penny in my own disposal— never in my life 
thought of ; and if I had been blessed with a 
good fortune, and that marvelous blessing to 
boot, a good husband, I verily believe I should 
have crammed it all uncounted into his pocket. 
But thou hast a cooler head of thine own, and I 
dare say will do exactly what is expedient and 
proper; but your brother's opinion seems some- 
what like Mr. Barwis', and I dare say you will 



1 88 MARY LAMB'. 

take it into due consideration ; yet, perhaps, an 
offer of your own money to take a farm may 
make tmcle do less for his nephew, and in that 
case Mr. D. might be a loser by your generos- 
ity. Weigh all these things well, and if you 
can so contrive it, let your brother settle the 
settlements himself when he returns, which will 
most probably be long before you want them. 

"You are settled, it seems, in the very house 
which your brother most dislikes. -If- you find 
this house very inconvenient, get out of it as 
fast as you can, for your brother says he sent 
you the fifty pounds to make you comfortable ; 
and by the general tone of his letter I am sure 
he wishes to make you easy in money matters ; 
therefore, why straiten yourself to pay the debt 
you owe him, which I am well assured he never 
means to take .-* Thank you for the letter, and 
for the picture of pretty little chubby nephew 
John. I have been busy making waiskoats and 
plotting new work to succeed the Tales ; as yet 
I have not hit upon anything to my mind. 

"Charles took an emendated copy of his 
farce to Mr. Wroughton, the manager, yester- 
day. Mr, Wroughton was very friendly to him 
and expressed high approbation of the farce; 
but there are two, he tells him, to come out 
before it ; yet he gave him hopes that it will 
come out this season ; but I am afraid yo^: will 



GOOD ADVICE. 189 

not see it by Christmas. It will do for another 
jaunt for you in the spring. We are pretty 
well and in fresh spirits about this farce. 
Charles has been very good lately in the matter 
of Smoking. 

" When you come bring the gown you wish 
to sell; Mrs. Coleridge will be in town then, 
and if she happens not to fancy it, perhaps some 
other person may. 

"Coleridge, I believe, is gone home; he left 
us with that design, but we have not heard from 
him this fortnight. 

"My respects to Corydon, mother and aunty. 
Farewell. My best wishes are with you. 

" When I saw what a prodigious quantity of 
work you had put into the finery, I was quite 
ashamed of my unreasonable request. I will 
never serve you so again, but I do dearly love 
worked muslin." 

So Coleridge was come back at last. " He is 
going to turn lecturer, on Taste, at the Royal 
Institution," Charles tells Manning. And the 
farce came out and failed. "We are pretty 
stout about it," he says to Wordsworth; "but, 
after all, we had rather it had succeeded. You 
will see the prologue in most of the morning 
papers. It was received with such shouts as I 
never witnessed to a prologue. It was attempt- 
ed to be encored. How hard! — a thing I 



I90 MARY LAMB. 

merely did as a task, because it was wanted, 
and set no great store by ; and Mr. H. ! ! The 
number of friends we had in the house, my 
brother and I being in public offices, was aston- 
ishing, but they yielded at length to a few 
hisses. A hundred hisses ! (D — n the word ! I 
write it like kisses — how different!) a hundred 
hisses outweigh a thousand claps. The former 
come more directly from the heart. Well, 'tis 
withdrawn, and there is an end. Better luck 
to us." 

Sara's visit came to pass and proved an event- 
ful one to her. For at the Lambs' she now 
saw frequently their new friend, quite another 
William than he of '' English-partridge mem- 
ory," William Hazlitt ; and the intercourse 
between them soon drifted into a queer kind 
of courtship, and finally the courtship into mar- 
riage. Mary's next letters give piquant glimpses 
of the wayward course of their love-making. 
If her sympathies had been ready and unfailing 
in the case of the unknown lovers, Messrs. 
White, Dowling, Turner, and mysterious Curse- 
a-rat, this was an affair of deep and heartfelt 
interest : — 

''Oct., 1807. 

"I am two letters in your debt, but it has 
not been so much from idleness, as a wish to 
see how your comical love affair would turn, out. 



SARA AND HAZLITT. 191 

You know I made a pretense not to interfere, 
but like all old maids I feel a mighty solicitude 
about the event of love stories. I learn from 
the lover that he has not been so remiss in his 
duty as you supposed. His effusion and your 
complaints of his inconstancy crossed each 
other on the road. He tells me his was a very 
strange letter, and that probably it has affronted 
you. That it was a strange letter I can readily 
believe ; but that you were affronted by a 
strange letter is not so easy for me to conceive, 
that not being your way of taking things. But, 
however it may be, let some answer come either 
to him or else to me, showing cause why you do 
not answer him. And pray, by all means, pre- 
serve the said letter, that I may one day have 
the pleasure of seeing how Mr. Hazlitt treats 
of love. 

" I was at your brother's on Thursday. Mrs. 
Stoddart tells me she has not written, because 
she does not like to put you to the expense of 
postage. They are very well. Little Missy 
thrives amazingly. Mrs. Stoddart conjectures 
she is in the family way again, and those kind 
of conjectures generally prove too true. Your 
other sister-in-law, Mrs. Hazlitt, was brought to 
bed last week of a boy, so that you are likely 
to have plenty of nephews and nieces. Yester- 
day evening we were at Rickman's, and who 



192 MARY LAMB. 

should we find there but Hazlitt ; though if you 
do not know it was his first invitation there, it 
will not surprise you as much as it did us. We 
were very much pleased, because we dearly love 
our friends to be respected by our friends. 
The most remarkable events of the evening 
were that we had a very fine pine-apple, that 
Mr. Phillips, Mr. Lamb and Mr. Hazlitt played 
at cribbage in the most polite and gentlemanly 
manner possible, and that I won two rubbers at 
whist. 

" I am glad aunty left you some business to 
do. Our compliments to her and to your 
mother. Is it as cold at Winterslow as it is 
here } How do the Lions go on 1 I am better 
and Charles is tolerably well. Godwin's new 
tragedy [Antonio] will probably be damned the 
latter end of next week [which it was]. Charles 
has written the prologue. Prologues and epi- 
logues will be his death. If you know the 
extent of Mrs. Reynolds' poverty, you will be 
glad to hear Mr. Norris has got ten pounds a 
year for her from the Temple Society She 
will be able to make out pretty well now. 

*' Farewell. Determine as wisely as you can 
in regard to Hazlitt, and if your determination 
is to have him, Heaven send you many happy 
years together. If I am not mistaken I have 
concluded letters on the Corydon courtship with 



PROS AND CONS. 193 

this same wish. I hope it is not ominous of 
change ; for if I were sure you would not be 
quite starved to death nor beaten to a mummy, 
I should like to see Hazlitt and you come 
together, if (as Charles observes) it were only 
for the joke's sake. Write instantly to me." 

''Dec. 21. 
" I have deferred answering your last letter 
in hopes of being able to give you some intelli- 
gence that might be useful to you ; for I every 
day expected that Hazlitt or you would commu- 
nicate the affair to your brother ; but as the 
doctor is silent upon the subject, I conclude he 
knows nothing of the matter. You desire my 
advice, and therefore I tell you I think you 
ought to tell your brother as soon as possible ; 
for at present he is on very friendly visiting 
terms with Hazlitt, and, if he is not offended 
by too long concealment, will do everything in 
his power to serve you. If you chuse that I 
should tell him I will, but I think it would come 
better from you. If you can persuade Hazlitt 
to mention it, that would be still better; for I 
know your brother would be unwilling to give 
credit to you, because you deceived yourself in 
regard to Corydon. Hazlitt, I know, is shy of 
speaking first ; but I think it of such great 
importance to you to have your brother friendly 

? 



194 MARY LAMB. 

in the business that, if you can overcome his 
reluctance, it would be a great point gained. 
For you must begin the world with ready 
money — at least an hundred pounds; for if 
you once go into furnished lodgings, you will 
never be able to lay by money to buy furniture. 
If you obtain your brother's approbation he 
might assist you, either by lending or other- 
wise. I have a great opinion of his generosity 
where he thinks it would be useful. 

*'Hazlitt's brother is mightily pleased with 
the match, but he says you must have furniture, 
and be clear in the world at first setting out, 
or you will be always behind-hand. He also 
said he would give you what furniture he could 
spare. I am afraid you can bring but few things 
away from your own house. What a pity that 
you have laid out so much money on your cot- 
tage! that money would just have done. I most 
heartily congratulate you on having so well got 
over your first difficulties ; and now that it is 
quite settled, let us have no more fears. I now 
mean not only to hope and wish, but to per- 
suade myself that you will be very happy 
together. Endeavor to keep your mind as 
easy as you can. You ought to begin the world 
with a good stock of health and spirits ; it is 
quite as necessary as ready money at first set- 
ting out. Do not teize yourself about coming 



A LOVE LETTER. 1 95 

to town. When your brother learns how things 
are going on, we shall consult him about meet- 
ings and so forth ; but at present, any hasty 
step of that kind would not answer, I know. 
If Hazlitt were to go down to Salisbury, or you 
were to come up here without consulting your 
brother, you know it would never do. Charles 
is just come into dinner : he desires his love 
and best wishes." 

Perhaps the reader will, like Mary, be curious 
to see one of the lover's letters in this ''com- 
ical love affair." Fortunately one, the very one, 
it seems, which Sara's crossed, and was pre- 
served at Mary's particular request, is given in 
the Hazlitt Memoirs , and runs thus: — 

"My dear Love: 

"Above a week has passed and I have re- 
ceived no letter — not one of those letters 'in 
which I live or have no life at all.' What is 
become of you } Are you married, hearing that 
I was dead (for so it has been reported) t or are 
you gone into a nunnery } or are you fallen in 
love with some of the amorous heroes of Boccac- 
cio .-* Which of them is it } Is it Chynon, who 
was transformed from a clown into a lover, and 
learned to spell by the force of beauty } or with 
Lorenzo, the lover of Isabella, whom her three 
brethren hated (as your brother does me), who 



196 MARY LAMB. 

was a merchant's clerk ? or with Federigo 
Alberigi, an honest gentleman who ran through 
his fortune, and won his mistress by cooking a 
fair falcon for her dinner, though it was the 
only means he had left of getting a dinner for 
himself ? This last is the man ; and I am the 
more persuaded of it because I think I won 
your good liking myself by giving you an enter- 
tainment — of sausages, when I had no money 
to buy them with. Nay, now, never deny it ! 
Did not I ask your consent that very night 
after, and did you not give it ? Well, I should 
be confoundedly jealous of those fine gallants if 
I did not know that a living dog is better than 
a dead lion ; though, now I think of it, Boccac- 
cio does not in general make much of his lov- 
ers ; it is his women who are so delicious. I 
almost wish I had lived in those times and had 
been a little more amiable. Now, if a woman 
had written the book it would not have had this 
effect upon me : the men would have been 
heroes and angels, and the women nothing at 
all. Isn't there some truth in that } Talking 
of departed loves, I met my old flame the other 
day in the street. I did dream of her one night 
since, and only one ; every other night I have 
had the same dream I have had for these two 
months past. Now, if you are at all reasonable 
this will satisfy you. . 



A LOVE LETTER. 197 

^^ Thursday moming. — The book is come. 
When I saw it I thought that you had sent it 
back in a huff, tired out by my sauciness and 
coldness and delays, and were going to keep an 
account of dimities and sayes, or to salt pork 
and chronicle small beer, as the dutiful wife of 
some fresh-looking rural swain ; so that you 
cannot think how surprised and pleased I was 
to find them all done. I liked your note as well 
or better than the extracts; it is just such a 
note as such a nice rogue as you ought to write 
after the provocation you had received. I would 
not give a pin for a girl * whose cheeks never 
tingle,' nor for myself if I could not make them 
tingle sometimes. Now, though I am always 
writing to you about * lips and noses ' and such 
sort of stuff, yet as I sit by my fire-side (which 
I generally do eight or ten hours a day) I oftener 
think of you in a serious, sober light. For, 
indeed, I never love you so well as when I think 
of sitting down with you to dinner on a boiled 
scrag of mutton and hot potatoes. You please 
my fancy more then than when I think of you 

in -; no, you would never forgive me if I 

were to finish the sentence. Now I think of it, 
what do you mean to be dressed in when we 
are married } But it does not much matter ! I 
wish you, would let your hair grow; though 
perhaps nothing will be better than ' the same 



198 MARY LAMB. 

air and look with which at first my heart was 
took.' But now to business. I mean soon to 
call upon your brother inform, namely, as soon 
as I get quite well, which I hope to do in about 
another fortnight ; and then I hope you will 
come up by the coach as fast as the horses can 
carry you, for I long mightily to be in your 
ladyship's presence to vindicate my character. 
I think you had better sell the small house, I 
mean that at £,^ los., and I will borrow ;£ioo, 
so that we shall set off merrily, in spite of all 
the prudence of Edinburgh. 
*'Good bye, little dear!" 

Poor Sara ! That '* want of a certain dignity 
of action," nay, of a due " respect for herself," 
which Mary lamented in her, had been discov- 
ered but too quickly by her lover and reflected 
back, as it was sure to be, in his attitude toward 
her. 

Charles, also, as an interested and amused 
spectator of the unique love affair, reports 
progress to Manning in a letter of Feb. 26th, 
1808: — 

" Mary is very thankful for your remem.brance 
of her; and with the least suspicion of merce- 
nariness, as the silk, the symbolum materiale of 
your friendship, has not yet appeared. I think 



A LOVE LETTER. I99 

Horace says somewhere, nox longa. I would 
not impute negligence or unhandsome delays to 
a person whom you have honored with your 
confidence ; but I have not heard of the silk or 
of Mr. Knox save by your letter. May be he 
expects the first advances ! or it may be that he 
has not succeeded in getting the article on 
shore, for it is among the res prohibitce et non 
nisi sinuggle-atio7tis via fruend(E, But so it is ; 
in the friendships between wicked inen the very 
expressions of their good will cannot but be 
sinful. A treaty of marriage is on foot between 
William Hazlitt and Miss Stoddart. Something 
about settlements only retards it. She has 
somewhere about £,%o a year, to be £,120 when 
her mother dies. He has no settlement except 
what he can claim from the parish. Paupeo est 
tamen, sed amat. The thing is therefore in 
abeyance. But there is love a-both sides." 

In the same month Mary wrote Sara a letter 
showing she was alive to the fact that a 
courtship which appeared to on-lookers, if not 
to the lover himself, much in the light of a good 
joke, was not altogether a reassuring com- 
mencement of so serious an affair as marriage. 
She had her misgivings, and no wonder, as to 
how far the easy-going, comfort-loving, matter- 
of-fact Sara was fit for the difficult happiness of 
life-long companionship with a man of ardent 



200 MARY LAMB. 

genius and morbid, splenetic temperament, to 
whom ideas were meat, drink and clothing, 
while the tangible entities bearing those names 
were likely to be precariously supplied. Still 
Mary liked both the lovers so well she could 
not choose but that hope should preponderate 
over fear. Meeting as they did by the Lambs' 
fire-side, each saw the other to the best advan- 
tage. For, in the glow of Mary's sympathy 
and faith, and the fine, stimulating atmosphere 
of Charles' genius, Hazlitt's shyness had first 
melted away ; his thoughts had broken the spell 
of self-distrust that kept them pent in uneasy 
silence, and had learned to flow forth in a strong 
and brilliant current, whilst the lowering frown 
which so often clouded his handsome, eager 
face was wont to clear off. There, too, Sara's 
unaffected good sense and hearty, friendly 
nature had free play, and perhaps Mary's friend- 
ship even reflected on her a tinge of the ideal to 
veil the coarser side of her character: — 

"I have sent your letter and drawing," [of 
Middleton Cottage, Winterslow, where Sara 
was living,] Mary writes, " off to Wem, [Haz- 
litt's father's in Shropshire,] where I conjecture 
Hazlitt is. He left town on Saturday afternoon 
without telling us where he was going. He 
seemed very impatient at not hearing from you. 
He was very ill, and I suppose is gone home to 



MARY TO SARA. 201 

his father's to be nursed. I find Hazlitt has 
mentioned to you the intention which we had 
of asking you up to town, which we were bent 
on doing ; but, having named it since to your 
brother, the doctor expressed a strong desire 
that you should not come to town to be at any 
other house but his own, for he said it would 
have a very strange appearance. His wife's 
father is coming to be with them till near the 
end of April, after which time he shall have 
full room for you. And if you are to be mar- 
ried he wishes that you should be married with 
all the proper decorums from his house. Now, 
though we should be most willing to run any 
hazards of disobliging him if there were no 
other means of your and Hazlitt's meeting, yet 
as he seems so friendly to the match it would 
not be worth while to alienate him from you 
and ourselves too, for the slight accommoda- 
tion which the difference of a few weeks would 
make ; provided always, and be it understood, 
that if you and H. make up your minds to be 
married before the time in which you can be at 
your brother's, our house stands open and most 
ready at a moment's notice to receive you. 
Only we would not quarrel unnecessarily with 
your brother. Let there be a clear necessity 
shown and we will quarrel with anybody's 
brother. 



202 MARY LAMB. 

" Now, though I have written to the above 
effect, I hope you will not conceive but that 
both my brother and I had looked forward to 
your coming with unmixed pleasure, and are 
really disappointed at your brother's declara- 
tion ; for next to the pleasure of being married 
is the pleasure of making or helping marriages 
forward. 

" We wish to hear from you that you do not 
take our seeming change of purpose in ill part, 
for it is but seeming on our part, for it was my 
brother's suggestion, by him first mentioned to 
Hazlitt and cordially approved by me ; but your 
brother has set his face against it, and it is 
better to take him along with us in our plans, 
if he will good-naturedly go along with us, than 
not. 

"The reason I have not written lately has 
been that I thought it better to leave you all to 
the workings of your own minds in this moment- 
ous affair, in which the inclinations of a by- 
stander have a right to form a wish, but not to 
give a vote. 

" Being, with the help of wide lines, at the 
end of my last page, I conclude with our kind 
wishes and prayers for the best." 

The wedding-day was fixed and Mary was to 
be bridesmaid. 

*' Do not be angry that I have not written to 



PRELIMINARIES, 203 

you," she says. *' I have promised your brother 
to be at your wedding, and that favor you must 
accept as an atonement for my offenses. You 
have been in no want of correspondence lately, 
and I wished to leave you both to your own 
inventions. 

" The border you are working for me I prize 
at a very high rate, because I consider it as 
the last work you can do for me, the time so 
fast approaching that you must no longer work 
for your friends. Yet my old fault of giving 
away presents has not left me, and I am desir- 
ous of even giving away this your last gift. I 
had intended to have given it away without 
your knowledge, but I have intrusted my secret 
to Hazlitt and I suppose it will not remain a 
secret long, so I condescend to consult you. 

" It is to Miss Hazlitt to whose superior 
claim I wish to give up my right to this pre- 
cious worked border. Her brother William is 
her great favorite and she would be pleased to 
possess his bride's last work. Are you not to 
give the fellow-border to one sister-in-law, and 
therefore has she not a just claim to it.? I 
never heard in the annals of weddings (since 
the days of Nausicaa, and she only washed her 
old gowns for that purpose) that the brides 
ever furnished the apparel of their maids. 
Besides, I can be completely clad in your work 



204 MARY LAMB. 

without it ; for the spotted muslin will serve 
both for cap and hat {nota bene, my hat is the- 
same as yours), and the gown you sprigged for 
me has never been made up, therefore I can 
wear that — or, if you like better, I will make 
up a new silk which Manning has sent me from 
China. Manning would like to hear I wore it 
for the first time at your wedding. It is a very 
pretty light color, but there is an objection 
(besides not being your work, and that is a very 
serious objection), and that is Mrs. Hazlitt tells 
me that all Winterslow would be in an uproar 
if the bridesmaid was to be dressed in anything 
but white, and although it is a very light color, 
I confess we cannot call it white, being a sort 
of dead-whiteish bloom color. Then silk, per- 
haps, in a morning is not so proper, though the 
occasion, so joyful, might justify a full dress. 
Determine for me in this perplexity between 
the sprig and the China-Manning silk. But do 
not contradict my whim about Miss Hazlitt 
having the border, for I have set my heart 
upon the matter. If you agree with me in this, 
I shall think you have forgiven me for giving 
away your pin — that was a mad trick ; but I 
had many obligations and no money. I repent 
me of the deed, wishing I had it now to send to 
Miss H. with the border ; and I cannot, will not 
give her the doctor's pin ; for having never hcd 



THE WEDDING. 20$ 

any presents from gentlemen in my young days, 
I highly prize all they now give me, thinking 
my latter days are better than my former. 

'* You must send this same border in your 
own name to Miss Hazlitt, which will save me 
the disgrace of giving away your gift, and make 
it amount merely to a civil refusal. 

" I shall have no present to give you on your 
marriage, nor do I expect I shall be rich enough 
to give anything to baby at the first christen- 
ing ; but at the second or third child's I hope 
to have a coral or so to spare out of my own 
earnings. Do not ask me to be godmother, for 
I have an objection to that; but there is, I 
believe, no serious duties attaching to a brides- 
maid, therefore I come with a willing mind, 
bringing nothing with me but many wishes, 
and not a few hopes, and a very little fear of 
happy years to come," 

If, as may be hoped, the final decision was in 
favor of the *'dead-whiteish bloom, China-Man- 
ning" silk, the Winterslow folk were spared all 
painful emotions on the subject, as the wedding 
took place at St. Andrew's, Holborn (May-day 
morning, 1808), Dr. and Mrs. Stoddart and 
Charles and Mary Lamb the chief, perhaps the 
only guests. The comedy of the courtship 
merging into the solemnity of marriage was 
the very occasion to put Lamb into one of his 



2o6 MARY LAMB. 

wildest moods. '*I had like to have been 
turned out several times during the ceremony," 
he confessed to Southey afterwards. ''Any- 
thing awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved 
once at a funeral. Yet can I read about these 
ceremonies with pious and proper feelings. 
The realities of life only seem the mockeries." 



CHAPTER X. 

Mrs. Leicester's School. — A Removal. — /*^^/r^ for 

Childrejt. 

1807-9. — ^t. 43-45- 

The Tales from Shakespeare ^sf^x^ no sooner 
finished than Mary began, as her letters show, 
to cast about for some new scheme which should 
realize an equally felicitous and profitable 
result. This time she drew upon her own 
invention ; and in about a year a little volume 
of tales for children was written, called Mrs. 
Leicester s Schooly to which Charles also con- 
tributed. The stories, ten in number, seven by 
Mary and three by her brother, are strung on a 
connecting thread by means of an introductory 
'* Dedication to the Young Ladies at Amwell 
School," who are supposed to beguile the drear- 
iness of the first evening at a new school by 
each telling the story of her own life, at the 
suggestion of a friendly governess, who consti- 
tutes herself their "historiographer." 

There is little or no invention in these tales ; 
but a "tenderness of feeling and a delicacy of 
taste" — the praise is Coleridge's^ which lift 



208 MARY LAMB. 

them quite above the ordinary level of chil- 
dren's stories. And in no way are these qual- 
ities shown more than in the treatment of the 
lights and shades, the failings and the virtues, 
of the little folk, which appear in due and nat- 
ural proportion ; but the faults are treated in a 
kindly, indulgent spirit, not spitefully enhanced 
as foils to shining virtue, after the manner of 
some even of the best writers for children. 
There are no unlovely impersonations of naugh- 
tiness pure and simple, nor any equally unlove- 
able patterns of priggish perfection. But the 
sweetest touches are in the portrayal of the 
attitude of a very young mind tov/ards death, 
affecting from its very incapacity for grief, or 
indeed from any kind of realization, as in this 
story of Elizabeth Villiers, for instance : — 

*'The first thing I can remember was my 
father teaching me the alphabet from the letters 
on a tombstone that stood at the head of my 
mother's grave. I used to tap at my father's 
study door : I think I now hear him say, * Who 
is there .-* What do you want, little girl .^ Go 
and see mamma. Go and learn pretty letters.' 
Many times in the day would my father lay 
aside his books and his papers to lead me to 
this spot, and make me point to the letters, and 
then set me to spell syllables and words ; in 
this manner, the epitaph on my mother's tomb 



ELIZABETH VILLIERS. 209 

being my primer and my spelling-book, I learned 
to read. 

" I was one day sitting on a step placed 
across the churchyard stile, when a gentleman 
passing by heard me distinctly repeat the let- 
ters which formed my mother's name, and then 
say ' Elizabeth Villiers ' with a firm tone, as 
if I had performed some great matter. This 
gentleman was my Uncle James, my mother's 
brother ; he was a lieutenant in the navy, and 
had left England a few weeks after the marriage 
of my father and mother, and now, returned 
home from a long sea-voyage, he was coming to 
visit my mother, no tidings of her decease hav- 
ing reached him, though she had been dead 
more than a twelvemonth. 

*' When my uncle saw me sitting on the stile, 
and heard me pronounce my mother's name, he 
looked earnestly in my face and began to fancy 
a resemblance to his sister, and to think I might 
be her child. I was too intent on my employ- 
ment to notice him, and went spelling on. 
'Who has taught you to spell so prettily, my 
little maid } ' said my uncle. ' Mamma,' I 
replied ; for I had an idea that the words on the 
tombstone were somehow a part of mamma, 
and that she had taught me. 'And who is 
mamma } ' asked my uncle. * Elizabeth Vil- 
liers,' I replied ; and then my uncle called me 



2IO MARY LAMB, 

his dear little niece, and said he would go with 
me to mamma ; he took hold of my hand, 
intending to lead me home, delighted that he 
had found out who I was, because he imagined 
it would be such a pleasant surprise to his sis- 
ter to see her little daughter bringing home her 
long-lost sailor uncle. 

"I agreed to take him to mamma, but we 
had a dispute about the way thither. My uncle 
was for going along the road which led directly 
up to our house ; I pointed to the churchyard 
and said that was the way to mamma. Though 
impatient of any delay, he was not willing to 
contest the point with his new relation ; there- 
fore he lifted me over the stile, and was then 
going to take me along the path to a gate he 
knew was at the end of our garden ; but no, I 
would not go that way neither. Letting go his 
hand, I said, ' You do not know the way ; I will 
show you ; ' and making what haste I could 
among the long grass and thistles, and jumping 
over the low graves, he said, as he followed 
what he called my wayward steps : — 

" ' What a positive little soul this niece of 
mine is ! I knew the way to your m.other's 
house before you were born, child.' At last I 
stopped at my mother's grave, and pointing to 
the tombstone said, * Here is mamma ! ' in a 
voice of exultation, as if I had now convinced 



ELIZABETH VILLIERS. 211 

him I knew the way best. I looked up in his 
face to see him acknowledge his mistake ; but 
oh ! what a face of sorrow did I see ! I was so 
frightened that I have but an imperfect recollec- 
tion of what followed. I remember I pulled his 
coat, and cried ' Sir ! sir ! ' and tried to move him. 
I knew not what to do. My mind was in a strange 
confusion ; I thought I had done something 
wrong in bringing the gentleman to mamma to 
make him cry so sadly, but what it was I could 
not tell. This grave had always been a scene 
of delight to me. In the house my father would 
often be weary of my prattle and send me from 
him ; but here he was all my own. I might say 
anything and be as frolicsome as I pleased here ; 
all was cheerfulness and good humor in our 
visits to mamma, as we called it. My father 
would tell me how quietly mamma slept there, 
and that he and his little Betsy would one day 
sleep beside mamma in that grave ; and when I 
went to bed, as I laid my little head on the 
pillow I used to wish I was sleeping in the 
grave with my papa and mamma, and in jny 
childish dreams I used to fancy myself there ; 
and it was a place within the ground, all smooth 
and soft and green. I never made out any 
figure of mamma, but still it was the tombstone 
and papa and the smooth, green grass, and my 
head resting on the elbow of my father." . . . 



212 MARY LAMB. 

In the story called The Father s Wedding Day 
the same strain of feeling is developed in a 
somewhat different way, but with a like truth. 
Landor praised it with such genial yet whimsi- 
cal extravagance as almost defeats itself, in a 
letter to Crabb Robinson, written in 1831 : *'It 
is now several days since I read the book you 
recommended to me, Mrs. Leicester's School, 
and I feel as if I owed you a debt in deferring 
to thank you for many hours of exquisite 
delight. Never have I read anything in prose 
so many times over within so short a space of 
time as The Father s Wedding Day. Most 
people, I understand, prefer the first tale — in 
truth a very admirable one — but others could 
have written it. Show me the man or woman, 
modern or ancient, who could have written this 
one sentence : ' When I was dressed in my new 
frock I wished poor mamma was alive, to see 
how fine I was on papa's wedding day ; and I 
ran to my favorite station at her bed-room 
door.' How natural in a little girl is this 
incongruity — this impossibility! Richardson 
would have given his Clarissa and Rousseau his 
Heloi'se to have imagined it. A fresh source 
of the pathetic bursts out before us, and not a 
bitter one. If your Germans can show us any- 
thing comparable to what I have transcribed, I 
would almost undergo a year's gurgle of their 



MRS. LEICESTER'S SCHOOL, 21 S 

language for it. The story is admirable through- 
out, incomparable, inimitable." 

The second tale — Louisa Manners, or the 
Farm-house — has already been spoken of (page 
II ) ; for in Louisa's pretty prattle we have a 
reminiscence of Mary's happiest childish days 
among '' the Brutons and the Gladmans " in 
Hertfordshire ; and in Margaret Green, or the 
Young Mahometan (pages 13-14), of her more 
sombre experiences with Grandmother Field at 
Blakesware. 

The tales contributed by Charles Lamb are 
Maria Howe, or the Effect of Witch Stories, 
which contains a weird and wonderful portrait 
of Aunt Hetty ; Susan Yates, or First Going to 
Church (see pages 3-4) ; and Arabella Hardy, or 
the Sea Voyage. 

It may be worth noting that Mary signs her 
little prelude, the Dedication to the Young 
Ladies, with the initials of her boy-favorite, 
Martin Burney ; a pretty indication of affection 
for him. 

Many years after the appearance of Mrs. 
Leicester s School Coleridge said to Allsop: 
"It at once soothes and amuses me to think — 
nay, to know— that the time will come when 
this little volume of my dear and well-nigh 
oldest friend, Mary Lamb, will be not only 
enjoyed but acknowledged as a rich jewel in 



214 MARY LAMB. ■ 

the treasury of our permanent English litera- 
ture; and I cannot help running over in my 
mind the long list of celebrated writers, aston- 
ishing geniuses, novels, romances, poems, his- 
tories, and dense political economy quartos, 
which, compared with J/rj. Leicester s School, 
will be remembered as often and prized as 
highly as Wilkie's and Glover's Epics, and 
Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophies compared with 
Robinson Crusoe.^^ 

But a not unimportant question is, What have 
the little folk thought ? The answer is incon- 
trovertible. The first edition sold out imme- 
diately, and four more were called for in the 
course of five years. It has continued in 
fair demand ever since, though there have 
not been anything like so many recent reprints 
as of the Tales from Shakespeare. It is one of 
those children's books which to reopen in after- 
life is like revisiting some sunny old garden, 
some favorite haunt of childhood, where every 
nook and cranny seems familiar and calls up a 
thousand pleasant memories. 

Mrs. Leicester's School was published at 
Godwin's Juvenile Library, Skinner street, 
Christmas, 1808; and, stimulated by its imme- 
diate success and by Godwin's encouragement, 
Mary once more set to work, this time to try 
her hand in verse. 



MRS. LEICESTER'S SCHOOL. 21$ 

But meanwhile came the domestic upset of 
a removal; nay, of two. The landlord of the 
rooms in Mitre Court Buildings wanted them 
for himself, and so the Lambs had to quit. 
March 2%, 1809, Charles writes to Manning: 
"While I think on it let me tell you we are 
moved. Don't come any more to Mitre Court 
Buildings. We are at 34 Southampton Build- 
ings, Chancery Lane, and shall be here till 
about the end of May ; then we remove to No. 
4 Inner Temple Lane, where I mean to live 
and die, for I have such a horror of moving 
that I would not take a benefice from the king 
if I was not indulged with non-residence. 
What a dislocation of comfort is comprised in 
that word * moving,' Such a heap of little 
nasty things, after you think all is got into the 
cart : old dredging-boxes, worn-out brushes, 
gallipots, vials, things that it is impossible the 
most necessitous person can ever want, but 
which the women who preside on these occa- 
sions will not leave behind if it was to save 
your soul. They 'd keep the cart ten minutes 
to stow in dirty pipes and broken matches, to 
show their economy. Then you can find noth- 
ing you want for many days after you get into 
your new lodgings. You must comb your hair 
with your fingers, wash your hands without 
soap, go about in dirty gaiters. Were I 



2l6 MARY LAMB. 

Diogenes I would not move out of a kilderkin 
into a hogshead, though the first had had 
nothing but small beer in it, and the second 
reeked claret." 

The unwonted stress of continuous literary 
work and turmoil and fatigue of a double 
removal produced the effect that might have 
been anticipated on Mary. In June (1809) 
Lamb wrote to Coleridge of his change "to 
more commodious quarters. I have two rooms 
on the third floor," he continues, "and five 
rooms above, with an inner staircase to myself, 
new painted, and all for £^0 a year ! I came 
into them on Saturday week, and on Monday 
following Mary was taken ill with the fatigue 
of moving ; and affected, I believe, by the 
novelty of the house, she could not sleep, and 
I am left alone with a maid quite a stranger to 
me, and she has a month or two's sad distrac- 
tion to go through. What sad, large pieces it 
cuts out of life! — out of her life, who is get- 
ting rather old; and we may not have many 
years to live together. I am weaker, and bear 
it worse than I ever did. But I hope we shall 
be comfortable by and by. The rooms are 
delicious, and the best look backwards into 
Hare Court, where there is a pump always 
going. Just now it is dry. Hare Court trees 
come in at the window, so that 'tis like living 



INNER TEMPLE LANE. 2\f 

in a garden. I try to persuade myself it is 
much pleasanter than Mitre Court ; but alas ! 
the household gods are slow to come in a new 
mansion. They are in their infancy to me ; 
I do not feel them yet ; no hearth has blazed 
to them yet. How I hate and dread new 
places ! . . . Let me hear from some of you, for 
I am desolate. I shall have to send you, in 
a week or two, two volumes of juvenile poetry 
done by Mary and me within the last six 
months, and that tale in prose which Words- 
worth so much liked, which was published at 
Christmas with nine others by us, and has 
reached a second edition. There's for you! 
We have almost worked ourselves out of child's 
work, and I don't know what to do. . . . Our 
little poems are but humble, but' they have no 
name. You must read them, remembering 
they were task-work; and perhaps you will 
admire the number of subjects, all of children, 
picked out by an old bachelor and an old maid. 
Many parents would not have found so many." 
Lamb left his friends to guess which were 
his and which Mary's. Were it a question of 
their prose the task were easy. The brother's 
"witty delicacy" of style, the gentle irony 
under which was hid his deep wisdom, the 
frolicsome, fantastic humors that often veiled 
his tenderness, are individual, unique. But in 



2l8 MARY LAMB. 

verse, and especially in a little volume of "task- 
work," those fragments of Mary's which he 
quotes in his letters show them to have been 
more similar and equal. It is certain only that 
The Three Friends, Qtieen Oria7td s Dream, and 
the lines To a River in which a Child was 
Drowjted, were his, and that his total share was 
" one-third in quantity of the whole ; " also 
that The Two Boys (reprinted by Lamb in his 
Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading), 
David in the Cave of Adullam, and The First 
Tooth, are certainly Mary's. Through all there 
breathes a sweet and wise spirit ; but some- 
times, and no doubt on Mary's part, the desire 
to enforce a moral is too obtrusive, and the 
teaching too direct, though always it is of a 
high and generous kind, never pragmatic and 
Pharisaic, after the manner of Dr. Watts. 
That difficult art of artlessness and perfect 
simplicity, as in Blake's Songs of Innocence, 
which a child's mind demands and a mature 
mind loves, is rarely attained. Yet I think 
The Beasts in the Tower, Cruinhs to the Birds, 
Motes in the SiMtbeajn, The Coffee Slips, The 
Broken Doll, The Books and the Sparrow, Blind- 
ness, The Two Boys, and others not a few, must 
have been favorites in many a nursery. 

The Text — in which a self-satisfied little 
gentleman who listens to and remembers a.11 



MARY'S POEMS. 2ig 

the sermon is contrasted, much to his disadvan- 
tage, with his sister, who did not hear a word, 
because her heart was full of affectionate long- 
ing to make up a quarrel they had had outside 
the church-door — is very pretty in a moral if 
not in a musical point of view. This and the 
three examples which I subjoin were certainly 
Mary's. The lullaby calls up a picture of her 
as a sad child nursing her little Charles, though 
he was no orphan : — 

NURSING. 

O hush, my little baby brother ; 
Sleep, my little baby brother ; 

Sleep, my love, upon my knee. 
What though, dear child, we've lost our mother? 

That can never trouble thee. 

You are but ten weeks old to-morrow ; 

What ca.n jyou know of our loss ? 
The house is full enough of sotrow. 

Little baby, don't be cross. 

Peace ! cry not so, my dearest love ; 

Hush, my baby-bird, lie still ; 
He's quiet now, he does not move ; 

Fast asleep is little Will. 

My only solace, only joy, 

Since the sad day I lost my mother, 

Is nursing her own Willy boy, 
My little orphan brother. 



220 MAI^V LAMB, 

The gentle raillery of the next seems equally 
characteristic of Mary : — 

FEIGNED COURAGE. 

Horatio, of ideal courage vain, 

Was flourishing in air his father's cane; 

And, as the fumes of valor swelled his pate, 

Now thought himself this hero, and now that : 

"And now," he cried, " I will Achilles be; 

My sword I brandish ; see the Trojans flee ! 

Now I'll be Hector when his angry blade 

A lane through heaps of slaughtered Grecians made; 

And now, by deeds still braver, I'll evince 

I am no less than Edward the Black Prince : 

Give way, ye coward French ! " — As thus he spoke, 

And aimed in fancy a sufficient stroke 

To fix the fate of Cressy or Poictiers 

(The Muse relates the hero's fate with tears). 

He struck his milk-white hand against a nail, 

Sees his own blood and feels his courage fail. 

Ah ! where is now that boasted valor flown, 

That in the tented field so late was shown ? 

Achilles weeps, great Hector hangs the head, 

And the Black Prince goes whimpering to bed ! 

The last is so pretty a little song it deserves 
to be fitted with an appropriate melody: — 

CRUMBS TO THE BIRDS. 

A bird appears a thoughtless thing; 
He's ever living on the wing, 
And keeps up such a caroling. 
That little else to do but sing 
A man would guess had he. 



MARY'S POEMS. 221 

No doubt he has his little cares, 
And very hard he often fares, 
The which so patiently he bears, 
That, listening to those cheerful airs. 

Who knows but he may be 
In want of his next meal of seeds ? 
I think for thai his sweet song pleads. 
If so, his pretty art succeeds ; 
I'll scatter there among the weeds 

All the small crumbs I see. 

Poetry for Children, Entirely Original, by the 
Author of Mrs. Leicester s School, as the title- 
page runs, was published in the summer of 
1809, and the whole of the first edition sold off 
rapidly ; but instead of being reprinted entire, 
selections from it only — twenty-six out of the 
eighty-four pieces — were incorporated, by a 
schoolmaster of the name of Mylius, in two 
books, called The First Book of Poetry and The 
Poetical Class Book, issued from the same Juve- 
nile Library in 18 10. These went through 
many editions, but ultimately dropped quite out 
of sight, as the original work had already done. 
Writing to Bernard Barton in 1827, Lamb says : 
"■ One likes to have one copy of everything one 
does. I neglected to keep one of Poetry for 
Children, the joint production of Mary and me, 
and it is not to be had for love or money." 
Fifty years later such specimens of these poems 
as could be gathered from the Mylius collections 



222 MARY LAMB. 

and from Lamb's own works were republished 
by Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, and also by Richard 
Heme Shepherd, when at last, in 1877, there 
came to hand from Australia a copy of the orig- 
inal edition ; it had been purchased at a sale of 
books and furniture at Plymouth, in 1866, and 
thence carried to Adelaide. It was reprinted 
entire by Mr. Shepherd (Chatto and Windus, 
1878), with a preface from which the foregoing 
details have been gathered. A New England 
publisher early descried the worth of the Poetry 
.for Childi^en, for it was reprinted in Boston — 
eighty-one pieces, at least, out of the eighty- 
four — in 18 12. A copy of this American edi- 
tion also has recently come to light. 

This was Mary's last literary undertaking in 
book form ; but there is reason to think she 
wrote occasional articles for periodicals for some 
years longer. One such, at any rate, on Needle- 
worky written in 18 14, is mentioned by Crabb 
Robinson, of which more hereafter. 



CHAPTER XL 

The Hazlitts again. — Letters to Mrs. HazHtt, and two 
Visits to Winterslow. — Birth of HazHtt's Son. 

1808-13. — ^t. 44-49. 

Hazlitt and his bride had, for the present, 
settled down in Sara's cottage at Winterslow ; 
so Mary continued to send them every now and 
then a pretty budget of gossip : — 

"Dec. 10, 1808. 
" I hear of you from your brother, but you do 
not write yourself, nor does Hazlitt. I beg that 
one or both of you will amend this fault as 
speedily as possible, for I am very anxious to 
hear of your health. . . . You cannot think 
how very much we miss you and H. of a 
Wednesday evening. All the glory of the 
night, I may say, is at an end. Phillips makes 
his jokes, and there is none to applaud him; 
Rickman argues, and there is no one to oppose 
him. The worst miss of all to me is that, when 
we are in the dismals, there is now no hope of 
relief from any quarter whatsoever. Hazlitt 
was most brilliant, most ornamental as a 



224 MARY LAMB. 

Wednesday man ; but he was a more useful 
one on common days, when he dropt in after a 
quarrel or a fit of the glooms. The Sheffington 
is quite out now, my brother having got drunk 
with claret and Tom Sheridan. This visit and 
the occasion of it is a profound secret, and 
therefore I tell it to nobody but you and Mrs. • 
Reynolds. Through the medium of Wrough- 
ton there came an invitation and proposal from 
T. S. that C. L. should write some scenes in a 
speaking pantomime, the other parts of which 
Tom now, and his father formerly, have manu- 
factured between them. So, in the Christmas 
holidays, my brother and his two great associ- 
ates, we expect, will be all three damned 
together, — that is, I mean, if Charles' share, 
which is done and sent in, is accepted. 

*' I left this unfinished yesterday in the hope 
that my brother would have done it for me ; his 
reason for refusing me was no * exquisite rea- 
son ; ' for it was because he must write a letter 
to Manning in three or four weeks, and there- 
fore he could not always be writing letters, he 
said. I wanted him to tell your husband about 
a great work which Godwin is going to publish 
[an Essay on Sepulchres\ to enlighten the world 
once more, and I shall not be able to make out 
what it is. He (Godwin) took his usual walk 
one evening, a fortnight since, to the end of 



LETTER TO SARA. 225 

Hatton Garden and back again. During that 
walk a thought came into his mind which he 
instantly set down and improved upon till he 
brought it, in seven or eight days, into the com- 
pass of a reasonable-sized pamphlet : to propose 
a subscription to all well-disposed people to 
raise a certain sum of money, to be expended in 
the care of a cheap monument for the former 
and the future great dead men — the monument 
to be a white cross with a wooden slab at the 
end, telling their names and qualifications ; this 
wooden slab and white cross to be perpetuated 
to the end of time. To survive the fall of 
empires and the destruction of cities by means 
of a map which was, in case of an insurrection 
among the people, or any other cause by which 
a city or country may be destroyed, to be care- 
fully preserved, and then when things got again 
into their usual order, the white-cross wooden- 
slab makers were to go to work again and set 
them in their former places. This, as nearly 
as I can tell you, is the sum and substance of 
it ; but it is written remarkably well, in his very 
best manner, for the proposal (which seems to 
me very like throwing salt on a sparrow's tail 
to catch him) occupies but half a page, which is 
followed by very fine writing on the benefits he 
conjectures would follow if it were done. Very 
excellent thoughts on death and on oyr feelings 
8 



226 MARY LAMB. 

concerning dead friends, and the advantages an 
old country has over a new one, even in the 
slender memorials we have of great men who 
once flourished. 

" Charles is come home and wants his dinner, 
and so the dead men must be no more thought 
on. Tell us how you go on and how you like 
Winterslow and winter evenings. Noales 
[Knowles] has not got back again, but he is 
in better spirits. John Hazlitt was here on 
Wednesday, very sober. Our love to Hazlitt. 

'* There came this morning a printed prospec- 
tus from S. T. Coleridge, Grasmere, of a weekly 
paper to be called The Friend ; a flamxing pros- 
pectus — I have no time to give the heads of 
it; to commence first Saturday in January. 
There came also a notice of a turkey from Mr. 
Clarkson, which I am more sanguine in expect- 
ing the accomplishment of than I am of Coler- 
idge's prophecy." 

A few weeks after the date of this letter Sara 
had a little son. He lived but six months ; just 
enough for his father's restless, dissatisfied 
heart to taste for once the sweetness of a tie 
unalloyed with any bitterness, and the memory 
of it never faded out. There is a pathetic allu- 
sion in one of his latest essays to a visit to the 
neglected spot where the baby was laid, and 
wjiere still, '' as the nettles wave in a corner of 



DEATH OF HOLCROFT, 22/ 

the churchyard over his little grave, the wel- 
come breeze helps to refresh me and ease the 
tightness at my breast." 

In March of this year, too, died one of the 
most conspicuous members of Lamb's circle, 
Thomas Holcroft ; dear to Godwin, but not, 
perhaps, a great favorite with the Lambs. He 
was too dogmatic and disputatious — a man 
who would pull you up at every turn for a 
definition, which, as Coleridge said, was like 
setting up perpetual turnpikes along the road 
to truth. Hazlitt undertook to write his life. 

The visit to Winterslow which had been so 
often talked of before Sara's marriage was 
again under discussion, and on June 2d, Mary, 
full of thoughtful consideration for her hosts 
that were to be, writes jointly with Martin 
Burney : — 

'* You may write to Hazlitt that J will certainly 
go to Winterslow, as my father has agreed to 
give me ^£5 to bear my expenses, and has given 
leave that I may stop till that is spent, leaving 
enough to defray my carriage on 14th July. 

" So far Martin has written, and further than 
that I can give you no intelligence, for I do 
not yet know Phillips' intentions ; nor can I tell 
the exact time when we can come ; nor can I 
positively say we shall come at all, for we have 
scruples of conscience about there being so 



228 MARY LAMB. 

many of us. Martin says if you can borrow a 
blanket or two he can sleep on the floor without 
either bed or mattress, which would save his 
expenses at the Hut ; for if Phillips breakfasts 
there he must do so too, which would swallow up 
all his money ; and he and I have calculated that 
if he has no inn expenses he may well spare 
that money to give you for a part of his roast 
beef. We can spare you also just five pounds. 
You are not to say this to Hazlitt, lest his deli- 
cacy should be alarmed ; but I tell you what 
Martin and I have planned, that if you happen 
to be empty-pursed at this time, you may think 
it as well to make him up a bed in the best 
kitchen. I think it very probable that Phillips 
will come, and if you do not like such a crowd 
of us, for they both talk of staying a whole 
month, tell me so, and we will put off our visit 
till next summer. 

*' Thank you very much for the good work you 
have done for me. Mrs. Stoddart also thanks 
you for the gloves. How often must I tell you 
never to do any needlework for anybody but 
me .? . . . 

'' I cannot write any more, for we have got a 
noble life of Lord Nelson, lent us for a short 
time by my poor relation the bookbinder, and I 
want to read as much of it as I can." 

The death of the baby and one of Mary's 



WINTERSLOW, 229 

severe attacks of illness combined to postpone 
the visit till autumn ; but when it did come to 
pass it completely restored her, and left lasting 
remembrance of its pleasures both with hosts 
and guests. Charles tells Coleridge (Oct. 30) : 
''The journey has been of infinite service to 
Mary. We have had nothing but sunshiny days, 
and daily walks from eight to twenty miles a 
day. Have seen Wilton, Salisbury, Stonehenge, 
etc. Her illness lasted just six weeks; it left 
her weak, but the country has made us whole." 
And Mary herself wrote to Sara (Nov. 7) : 
"The dear, quiet, lazy, delicious month we spent 
with you is remembered by me with such regret 
that I feel quite discontented and Winterslow- 
sick. I assure you I never passed such a pleas- 
ant time in the country in my life, both in the 
house and out of it, — the card-playing quarrels, 
and a few gaspings for breath after your swift 
footsteps up the high hills, excepted; and those 
drawbacks are not unpleasant in the recollection. 
We have got some salt butter to make our toast 
seem like yours, and we have tried to eat meat 
suppers, but that would not do, for we left our 
appetites behind us; and the dry loaf which 
offended you now comes in at night unaccom- 
panied; but, sorry I am to add, it is soon 
followed by the pipe and the gin-bottle. We 
smoked the very first night of our arrival. 



230 MAJ^V LAMB. 

"Great news ! I have just been interrupted 
by Mr. Dawe, who comes to tell me he was yes- 
terday elected an Academician. He said none 
of his own friends voted for him ; he has got it 
by strangers, who were pleased with his picture 
of Mrs. White. Charles says he does not 
believe Northcote ever voted for the admission 
of any one. Though a very cold day, Dawe was 
in a prodigious sweat for joy at his good 
fortune. 

" More great news ! My beautiful green cur- 
tains were put up yesterday, and all the doors 
listed with green baize, and four new boards 
put to the coal-hole, and fastening hasps put to 
the window, and my dyed Manning silk cut out. 
" Yesterday was an eventful day, for yester- 
day, too, Martin Burney was to be examined by 
Lord Eldon, previous to his being admitted as 
an attorney ; but he has not been here yet to 
announce his success, 

"I carried the baby-caps to Mrs. John Haz- 
litt. She was much pleased and vastly thank- 
ful. Mr. H. got fifty-four guineas at Rochester, 
and has now several pictures in hand. 

" I am going to tell you a secret, for 

says she would be sorry to have it talked of. 
One night came home from the ale- 
house, bringing with him a great, rough, ill- 
looking fellow, whom he introduced to 



WINTERSLOW, 231 

as Mr. Brown, a gentleman he. had hired as a 
mad-keeper, to take care of him at forty pounds 
a year, being ten pounds under the usual price 
for keepers, which sum Mr. Brown had agreed 
to remit out of pure friendship. It was with 
great difficulty and by threatening to call in the 

aid of a watchman and constables that 

could prevail on Mr. Brown to leave the house. 

"We had a good chearful meeting on Wednes- 
day; much talk of Winterslow, its woods and 
its nice sunflowers. I did not so much like 
Phillips at Winterslow as I now like him for 
having been with us at Winterslow. We roasted 
the last of his 'beech of oily nut prolific' on 
Friday at the Captain's. Nurse is now estab- 
lished in Paradise, alias the incurable ward of 
Westminster Hospital. I have seen her sitting 
in most superb state, surrounded by her seven 
incurable companions. They call each other 
ladies. Nurse looks as if she would be consid- 
ered as the first lady in the ward ; only one 
seemed like to rival her in dignity. 

*' A man in the India House has resigned, by 
which Charles will get twenty pounds a year, 
and White has prevailed upon him to write 
some more lottery puffs. If that ends in smoke 
the twenty pounds is a sure card, and has made 
us very joyful. I continue very well, and 
return you my sincere thanks for my good 



232 MARY LAMB. 

health and improved looks, which have almost 
made Mrs. Godwin die with envy ; she longs to 
come to Winterslow as much as the spiteful 
elder sister did to go to the well for a gift to 
spit diamonds. 

"Jane and I have agreed to boil a round of 
beef for your suppers when you come to town 
again. She, Jane, broke two of the Hogarth 
glasses while we were away, whereat I made a 
great noise. 

" Farewell. Love to William, and Charles' 
love and good wishes for the speedy arrival of 
the Life of Holcroft and the bearer thereof. 
Charles told Mrs. Godwin Hazlitt had found a 
well in his garden which, water being scarce in 
your country, would bring him in two hundred 
a year; and she came in great haste the next 
morning to ask me if it were true." 

Hazlitt, too, remembered to the end of his life 
those golden autumn days : *' Lamb among the 
villagers like the most capricious poet Ovid 
among the Goths ; " the evening walks with 
him and Mary to look at "the Claude Lorraine 
skies melting from azure into purple and gold, 
and to gather mushrooms that sprung up at 
our feet, to throw into our hashed mutton at 
supper." 

When Lamb called to congratulate Mr. Dawe 
on his good fortune his housekeeper seemed 



MR. DA WE, R. A. 233 

embarrassed, owned that her master was alone, 
but ushered in the visitor with reluctance. 
For why? ''At his easel stood D., with an 
immense spread of canvas before him, and by 
his side — a live goose. Under the rose he 
informed me that he had undertaken to paint 
a transparency for Vauxhall, against an expected 
visit of the allied sovereigns. I smiled at an 
engagement so derogatory to his new-born hon- 
ors ; but a contempt of small gains was never 
one of D.'s foibles. My eyes beheld crude 
forms of warriors, kings rising under his brush 
upon this interminable stretch of cloth. The 
Volga, the Don, the Dnieper were there, or 
their representative river gods, and Father 
Thames clubbed urns with the Vistula. Glory, 
with her dazzling eagle, was not absent, nor 
Fame, nor Victory. The shade of Rubens 
might have evoked the mighty allegories. But 
what was the goose "^ He was evidently sitting 
for a something. D. at last informed me that 
he could not introduce the Royal Thames with- 
out his swans ; that he had inquired the price 
of a live swan, and it being more than he was 
prepared to give for it, he had bargained with 
the poulterer for the next thing to it, adding 
significantly that it would do to roast after it 
had served its turn to paint swans by." (Lamb's 
Recollections of a Royal Academician?) 



234 MARY LAMB. 

The following year the visit to Winterslow 
was repeated, but not with the same happy- 
results. In a letter written during his stay to 
Mr. Basil Montague, Charles says : ** My head 
has received such a shock by an all-night jour- 
ney on the top of the coach that I shall have 
enough to do to nurse it into its natural pace 
before I go home. I must devote myself to 
imbecility ; I must be gloriously useless while I 
stay here. The city of Salisbury is full of 
weeping and wailing. The bank has stopped 
payment, and everybody in the town kept 
money at it, or has got some of its notes. 
Some have lost all they had in the world. It is 
the next thing to seeing a city with the plague 
within its walls ; and I do suppose it to be the 
unhappiest county in England — this, where I 
am making holiday. We purpose setting out 
for Oxford Tuesday fortnight, and coming 
thereby home. But no more night-travelling ; 
my head is sore (understand it of the inside) 
with that deduction from my natural rest which 
I suffered coming down. Neither Mary nor 
I can spare a morsel of our rest ; it is incum- 
bent on us to be misers of it." 

The visit to Oxford was paid, Hazlitt accom- 
panying them and much enhancing the enjoy- 
ment of it, especially of a visit to the picture 
gallery at Blenheim. "But our pleasant excur- 



MARY ILL AGAIN. 235 

sion has ended sadly for one of us," he tells 
Hazlitt on his return. '' My sister got home 
very well (I was very ill on the journey), and 
continued so till Monday night, when her com- 
plaint came on, and she is now absent from 
home. I think I shall be mad if I take any 
more journeys, with two experiences against it. 
I have lost all wish for sights." 

It was a long attack ; at the end of October 
Mary was still ''very weak and low-spirited," 
and there were domestic misadventures not cal- 
culated to improve matters. 

"We are in a pickle," says Charles to Words- 
worth. ''Mary, from her affectation of physi- 
ognomy, has hired a stupid, big, country wench, 
who looked honest, as she thought, and has 
been doing her work some days, but without 
eating ; and now it comes out that she was ill 
when she came, with lifting her mother about 
(who is now with God) when she was dying, 
and with riding up from Norfolk four days and 
nights in the wagon, and now she lies in her 
bed, a dead weight upon our humanity, incapable 
of getting up, refusing to go to a hospital, hav- 
ing nobody in town but a poor asthmatic uncle, 
and she seems to have made up her mind to 
take her flight to Heaven from our bed. Oh, 
for the little wheelbarrow which trundled the 
hunchback from door to door to try the various 



236 MARY LAMB. 

charities of different professions of mankind ! 
Here's her uncle just crawled up; he is far 
liker death than she. In this perplexity such 
topics as Spanish papers and Monkhouses sink 
into insignificance. What shall we do } " 

The perplexity seems to have cleared itself 
up somehow speedily, for in a week's time Mary 
herself wrote to Mrs. Hazlitt, not very cheer- 
fully, but with no allusion to this particular 
disaster: — 

"Nov. 30, 1 8 10. 

" I have taken a large sheet of paper, as if I 
were going to write a long letter ; but that is 
by no means my intention, for I have only time 
to write three lines, to notify what I ought to 
have done the moment I received your welcome 
letter; namely, that I shall be very much joyed 
to see you. Every morning lately I have been 
expecting to see you drop in, even before your 
letter came ; and I have been setting my wits 
to work to think how to make you as comfort- 
able as the nature of our inhospitable habits 
will admit. I must work while you are here, 
and I have been slaving very hard to get 
through with something before you come, that 
I may be quite in the way of it, and not teize 
you with complaints all day that I do not know 
what to do. 

" I am very sorry to hear of your mischance 



J 



GOSSIP. 237 

Mrs. Rickman has just buried her youngest 
child. I am glad I am an old maid, for you see 
there is nothing but misfortunes in the marriage 
state. Charles was drunk last night and drunk 
the night before, which night before was at 
Godwin's, where we went, at a short summons 
from Mr. G., to play a solitary rubber, which 
was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. and 
little Mrs. Liston ; and after them came Henry 
Robinson, who is now domesticated at Mr. 
Godwin's fire-side, and likely to become a for- 
midable rival to Tommy Turner. We finished 
there at twelve o'clock, Charles and Liston 
brim-full of gin-and-water and snuff, after which 
Henry Robinson spent a long evening by our 
fire-side at home, and there was much gin-and- 
water drunk, albeit only one of the party par- 
took of it, and H. R. professed himself highly 
indebted to Charles for the useful information 
he gave him on sundry matters of taste and 
imagination, even after Charles could not speak 
plain for tipsiness. But still he swallowed the 
flattery and the spirits as savorily as Robinson 
did his cold water. 

" Last night was to be a night, but it was 
not. There was a certain son of one of Mar- 
tin's employers, one young Mr. Blake, to do 
whom honor Mrs. Burney brought forth, first 
rum, then a single bottle of champaine, long 



238 MARV LAMB. 



kept in her secret hoard ; then two bottles of 
her best currant wine, which she keeps for Mrs. 
Rickman, came out; and Charles partook liber- 
ally of all these beverages, while Mr. Young 
Blake and Mr. Ireton talked of high matters, 
such as the merits of the Whip Club, and the 
merits of red and white champaine. Do I spell 
that last word right .-* Rickman was not there, 
so Ireton had it all his own way. 

"The alternating Wednesdays will chop off 
one day in the week from your jolly days, and I 
do not know how we shall make it up to you, 
but I will contrive the best I can. Phillips 
comes again pretty regularly, to the great joy 
of Mrs, Reynolds. Once more she hears the 
well-loved sounds of ' How do you do, Mrs. 
Reynolds } ' and * How does Miss Chambers 
do.?' 

" I have spun out my three lines amazingly ; 
now for family news. Your brother's little 
twins are not dead, but Mrs. John Hazlitt and 
her baby may be for anything I know to the 
contrary, for I have not been there for a pro- 
digious long time. Mrs. Holcroft still goes 
about from Nicholson to Tuthill, and Tuthill to 
Godwin, and from Godwin to Nicholson, to con- 
sult on the publication or no publication of the 
life of the good man, her husband. It is called 
The Life Everlasting. How does that same life 



J1 



GOSSIP' 239 

go on in your parts ? Good bye ; God bless you. 
I shall be glad to see you when you come this 
way. 

" I am going in great haste to see Mrs. Clark- 
son, for I must get back to dinner, which I have 
hardly time to do. I wish that dear, good, 
amiable woman would go out of town. I 
thought she was clean gone, and yesterday 
there was a consultation of physicians held at 
her house, to see if they could keep her among 
them here a few weeks longer." 

The concluding volumes of this same Life 
Everlasting remained unprinted somewhere in 
a damp hamper, Mr. Carew Hazlitt tells us ; 
for, in truth, the admirable fragment of autobi- 
ography Holcroft dictated on his death-bed con- 
tained the cream of the matter, and was all the 
public cared to listen to. 

Mary continuing "in a feeble and tottering 
condition," Charles found it needful to make a 
decisive stand on her behalf against the exhaus- 
tion and excitement of incessant company, and 
especially against the disturbed rest, which 
resulted from sharing her room with a guest : — 

"Nov. 28, 1 8 10. 

" Mary has been very ill indeed since you saw 
her," he wrote to Hazlitt ; " as ill as she can be 
to remain at home. But she is a good deal 



240 MARY LAMB. 

better now, owing to a very careful regimen. 
She drinks nothing but water, and never goes 
out ; she does not even go to the Captain's. 
Her indisposition has been ever since that night 
you left town, the night Miss Wordsworth 
came. Her coming, and that d — d Mrs. God- 
win coming and staying so late that night, so 
overset her that she lay broad awake all that 
night, and it was by a miracle that she escaped 
a very bad illness, which I thoroughly expected. 
I have made up my mind that she shall never 
have any one in the house again with her, and 
that no one shall sleep with her, not even for a 
night ; for it is a very serious thing to be always 
living with a kind of fever upon her ; and there- 
fore I am sure you will take it in good part if I 
say that if Mrs. Hazlitt comes to town at any 
time, however glad we shall be to see her in the 
day-time, I cannot ask her to spend a night 
under our roof. Some decision we must come 
to ; for the harassing fever that we have both 
been in, owing to Miss Wordsworth's coming, 
is not to be borne, and I would rather be dead 
than so alive. However, owing to a regimen 
and medicines which Tuthill has given her, who 
very kindly volunteered the care of her, she is 
a great deal quieter, though too much harassed 
by company, who cannot or will not see how 
late hours and society teaze her. 



CHARLES TO HAZLITT. 241 

The next letter to Sara is a cheerful one, as 
the occasion demanded. It is also the last to 
her that has been preserved, probably the last 
that was written ; for, a few months later, Haz- 
litt fairly launched himself on a literary career 
in London, and took up his abode next door 
to Jeremy Bentham, at 19 York street, West- 
minster, once Milton's house : — 

"Oct. 2, 181 1. 

" I have been a long time anxiously expect- 
ing the happy news that I have just received. 
I address you because, as the letter has been 
lying some days at the India House, I hope you 
are able to sit up and read my congratulations 
on the little live boy you have been so many 
years wishing for. As we old women say, 
* May he live to be a great comfort to you ! ' 
I never knew an event of the kind that gave 
me so much pleasure as the little long-looked- 
for-come-at-last's arrival; and I rejoice to hear 
his honor has begun to suck. The word was 
not distinctly written, and I was a long time 
making out the solemn fact. I hope to hear 
from you soon, for I am anxious to know if 
your nursing labors are attended with any diffi- 
culties. I wish you a happy gettmg-up and a 
merry christening ! 

" Charles sends his love ; perhaps, though, 



242 MARY LAMB. 

he will write a scrap to Hazlitt at the end. He 
is now looking over me. He is always in my 
way, for he has had a month's holiday at home. 
But I am happy to say they end on Monday, 
when mine begin, for I am going to pass a 
week at Richmond with Mrs. Burney. She 
has been dying, but she went to the Isle of 
Wight and recovered once more, and she is 
finishing her recovery at Richmond. When 
there, I mean to read novels and play at piquet 
all day long." 

" My blessing and Heaven's be upon him," 
added Charles, *'and make him like his father, 
with something a better temper and a smoother 
head of hair, and then all the men and women 
must love him." ... 



CHAPTER XII. 

An Essay on Needlework. 
1 814. — JEt. 50. 

Towards the end of 18 14 Crabb Robinson 
called on Mary Lamb and found her suffering 
from great fatigue after writing an article on 
needlework for the British Ladys Magazine, 
which was just about to start on a higher basis 
than its predecessors. It undertook to provide 
something better than the usual fashion-plates, 
silly tales and sillier verses then generally 
thought suitable for women; and, to judge by 
the early numbers, the editor kept the promise 
of his introductory address, and deserved a 
longer lease of life for his magazine than it 
obtained. 

Mary's little essay appeared in the number 
for April, 181 5, and is on many accounts inter- 
esting. It contains several autobiographic 
touches ; it is the only known instance in which 
she has addressed herself to full-grown readers, 
and it is sagacious and far-seeing. For Mary 
does not treat of needlework as an art, but as a 



244 MARY LAMB. 

factor in social life. She pleads both for the 
sake of the bodily welfare of the many thou- 
sands of women who have to earn their bread 
by it, and of the mental well-being of those 
who have not so to do ; that it should be 
regarded, like any other mechanical art, as a ^ 
thing to be done for hire; and that what a 
woman does work at should be real work — 
something, that is, which yields a return either 
of mental or of pecuniary profit. She also 
exposes the fallacy of the time-honored maxim, 
"A penny saved is a penny earned," by the ruth- 
less logic of experience. But the reader shall 
judge for himself; the Magazme has become so 
rare a book that I will here subjoin the little 
essay in full : — 

ON NEEDLEWORK. 

"Mr. Editor: 

"In early life I passed eleven years in the 
exercise of my needle for a livelihood. Will 
you allow me to address your readers, among 
whom might perhaps be found some of the kind 
patronesses of my former humble labors, on a 
subject widely connected with female life — the 
state of needlework in this country } 

"To lighten the heavy burthen which many 
ladies impose upon themselves is one object 
which I have in view ; but I confess my strong- 



AN ESSAY ON NEEDLEWORK. 245 

est motive is to excite attention towards the 
industrious sisterhood to which I once belonged. 

"From books I have been informed of the 
fact upon which The British Ladys Magazine 
chiefly founds its pretensions; namely, that 
women have of late been rapidly advancing in 
intellectual improvement. Much may have been 
gained in this way, indirectly, for that class of 
females for whom I wish to plead. Needlework 
and intellectual improvement are naturally in a 
state of warfare. But I am afraid the root of 
evil has not, as yet, been struck at. Work- 
women of every description were never in so 
much distress for want of employment. 

"Among the present circle of my acquaint- 
ance I am proud to rank many that may truly 
be called respectable ; nor do the female part of 
them in their mental attainments at all disprove 
the prevailing opinion of that intellectual pro- 
gression which you have taken as the basis of 
your work ; yet I affirm that I know not a 
single family where there is not some essential 
drawback to its comfort, which may be traced 
to needlework done at hoine^ as the phrase is, 
for all needlework performed in a family by 
some of its own members, and for which no 
remuneration in money is received or expected. 

" In money alone, did I say } I would appeal 
to all the fair votaries of voluntary housewifery 



246 MARY LAMB. 

whether, in the matter of conscience, any one 
of them ever thought she had done as much 
needlework as she ought to have done. Even 
fancy work, the fairest of the tribe ! How 
dehghtful the arrangement of her materials ! 
The fixing upon her happiest pattern, how 
pleasing an anxiety ! How cheerful the com- 
mencement of the labor she enjoys! But that 
lady must be a true lover of the art, and so 
industrious a pursuer of a predetermined pur- 
pose, that it were pity her energy should not 
have been directed to some wiser end, who can 
affirm she neither feels weariness during the 
execution of a fancy piece, nor takes more time 
than she had calculated for the performance. 

'' Is it too bold an attempt to persuade your 
readers that it would prove an incalculable 
addition to general happiness and the domestic 
comfort of both sexes, if needlework were never 
practiced but for a remuneration in money ? 
As nearly, however, as this desirable thing can 
be effected, so much more nearly will woman 
be upon an equality with men as far as respects 
the mere enjoyment of life. As far as that 
goes, I believe it is every woman's opinion that 
the condition of men is far superior to her own. 

" *They can do what they like,' we say. Do 
not these words generally mean they have time 
to seek out whatever amusements suit their 



THE DUTIES OF WOMEN. 247 

tastes ? We dare not tell them we have no 
time to do this ; for if they should ask in what 
manner we dispose of our time we should blush 
to enter upon a detail of the minutiae which 
compose the sum of a woman's daily employ- 
ment. Nay, many a lady, who allows not her- 
self one-quarter of an hour's positive leisure 
during her waking hours, considers her own 
husband as the most industrious of men if he 
steadily pursue his occupation till the hour of 
dinner, and will be perpetually lamenting her 
own idleness. 

" Real business and real leistire make up the 
portions of men's time, — two sources of happi- 
ness which we certainly partake of in a very 
inferior degree. To the execution of employ- 
ments in which the faculties of the body or 
mind are called into busy action there must be 
a consoling importance attached, which fem- 
inine duties (that generic term for all our 
business) cannot aspire to. 

** In the most meritorious discharges of those 
duties the highest praise we can aim at is to be 
accounted the helpmates of mait; who, in return 
for all he does for us, expects, and justly 
expects, us to do all in our power to soften and 
sweeten life. 

" In how many ways is a good woman 
employed in thought or action through the 



248 MARY LAMB. 

day, that htrgood man may be enabled to feel 
his leisure hours real, substantial holiday, and 
perfect respite from the cares of business ! 
Not the least part to be done to accomplish 
this end is to fit herself to become a conversa- 
tional companion ; that is to say^he has to 
study and understand the subjects on which he 
loves to talk. This part of our duty, if strictly 
performed, will be found by far our hardest 
part. The disadvantages we labor under from 
an education differing from a manly one make 
the hours in which we sit and do nothing in 
men's company too often anything but a relax- 
ation ; although as to pleasure and instruction, 
time so passed may be esteemed more or less 
delightful. 

"To make a man's home so desirable a place 
as to preclude his having a wish to pass his 
leisure hours at any fire-side in preference to 
his own, I should humbly take to be the sum 
and substance of woman's domestic ambition. 
I would appeal to our British ladies, who are 
generally allowed to be the most jealous and 
successful of all women in the pursuit of this 
object ; I would appeal to them who have been 
most successful in the performance of this laud- 
able service, in behalf of father, son, husband 
or brother, whether an anxious desire to per- 
form this duty well is not attended with enough 



THE DUTIES OF WOMEN. 249 

of fneittdl exertion, at least, to incline them to 
the opinion that women may be more properly- 
ranked among the contributors to than the 
partakers of the undisturbed relaxation of men. 

"If a family be so well ordered that the 
master is never called in to its direction, and 
yet he perceives comfort and economy well 
attended to, the mistress of that family (espe- 
cially if children form a part of it) has, I 
apprehend, as large a share of womanly employ- 
ment as ought to satisfy her own sense of duty ; 
even though the needle-book and thread-case 
were quite laid aside, and she cheerfully con- 
tributed her part to the slender gains of the 
corset-maker, the milliner, the dressmaker, the 
plain worker, the embroidress and all the 
numerous classifications of females supporting 
themselves by needlework, that great staple 
commodity which is alone appropriated to the 
self-supporting part of our sex. 

** Much has been said and written on the sub- 
ject of men engrossing to themselves every 
occupation and calling. After many years of 
observation and reflection I am obliged to 
acquiesce in the notion that it cannot well be 
ordered otherwise. 

"If, at the birth of girls, it were possible to 
foresee in what cases it would be their fortune 
to pass a single life, we should soon find trades 



250 MARY LAMB. 

wrested from their present occupiers and trans- 
ferred to the exclusive possession of our sex. 
The whole mechanical business of copying writ- 
ings in the law department, for instance, might 
very soon be transferred with advantage to the 
poorer sort of women, who, with very little 
teaching, would soon beat their rivals of the 
other sex in facility and neatness. The parents 
of female children who were known to be des- 
tined from their birth to maintain themselves 
through the whole course of their lives, with 
like certainty as their sons are, would feel it a 
duty incumbent on themselves to strengthen 
the minds and even the bodily constitutions of 
their girls so circumstanced, by an education 
which, without affronting the preconceived hab- 
its of society, might enable them to follow some 
occupation now considered above the capacity, 
or too robust for the constitution, of our sex. 
Plenty of resources would then lie open for 
single women to obtain an independent liveli- 
hood, when every parent would be upon the 
alert to encroach upon some employment now 
engrossed by men, for such of their daughters 
as would then be exactly in the same predica- 
ment as their sons now are. Who, for instance, 
would lay by money to set up his sons in trade, 
give premiums, and in part maintain them 
through a long apprenticeship ; or, which men 



^ 



WOMEN'S DIFFICULTIES. 25 1 

of moderate incomes frequently do, strain every 
nerve in order to bring them up to a learned 
profession ; if it were in a very high degree 
probable that, by the time they were twenty 
years of age, they would be taken from this 
trade or profession, and maintained during the 
remainder of their lives by the person whom 
they should jnarry ? Yet this is precisely the 
situation in which every parent, whose income 
does not very much exceed the moderate, is 
placed with respect to his daughters. 

''Even where boys have gone through a labori- 
ous education, superinducing habits of steady 
attention accompanied with the entire conviction 
that the business which they learn is to be the 
source of their future distinction, may it not be 
affirmed that the persevering industry required 
to accomplish this desirable end causes many a 
hard struggle in the minds of young men, even 
of the most hopeful disposition ? What, then, 
must be the disadvantages under which a very 
young woman is placed who is required to learn 
a trade, from which she can never expect to reap 
any profit, but at the expense of losing that 
place in society to the possession of which she 
may reasonably look forward, inasmuch as it is 
by far the most common lot, namely, the condi- 
tion of a happy English wife ? 

"As I desire to offer nothing to the consider- 



252 MARY LAMB. 

ation of your readers but what, at least as far as 
my own observation goes, I consider as truths 
confirmed by experience, I will only say that 
were I to follow the bent of my own speculative 
opinion, I should be inclined to persuade every 
female over whom I hope to have any influence 
to contribute all the assistance in her power to 
those of her own sex who may need it, in the 
employments they at present occupy, rather than 
to force them into situations now filled wholly 
by men. With the mere exception of the profits 
which they have a right to derive by their needle, 
I would take nothing from the industry of man 
which he already possesses. 

"*A penny saved is a penny earned,' is a 
maxim not true unless the penny be saved in the 
same time in which it might have been earned. 
I, who have known what it is to work for money 
earhed, have since had much experience in work- 
ing for ino7iey saved; and I consider, from the 
closest calculation I can make, that 2^ penny saved 
in that way bears about a true proportion to a 
farthing earned. I am no advocate for women 
who do not depend on themselves for subsistence, 
proposing to themselves to earn mo7tey. My 
reasons for thinking it not advisable are too 
numerous to state — reasons deduced from au- 
thentic facts and strict observations on domestic 
life in its various shades of comfort. But if the 



BUSY IDLENESS. 253 

females of a family nominally supported by the 
other sex find it necessary to add something to 
the common stock, why not endeavor to do 
something by which they may produce money 
in its true shape f 

" It would be an excellent plan, attended with 
very little trouble, to calculate every evening 
how much money has been saved by needlework 
done i7t the family, and compare the result with 
the daily portion of the yearly income. Nor 
would it be amiss to make a memorandum of 
the time passed in this way, adding also a guess 
as to what share it has taken up in the thoughts 
and conversation. This would be an easy mode 
of forming a true notion and getting at the 
exact worth of this species of home industry, 
and perhaps might place it in a different light 
from any in which it has hitherto been the fash- 
ion to consider it. 

" Needlework taken up as an amusement may 
not be altogether unamusing. We are all pretty 
good judges of what entertains ourselves, but 
it is not so easy to pronounce upon what may 
contribute to the entertainment of others. At 
all events, let us not confuse the motives of 
economy with those of simple pastime. If sav- 
ing be no object, and long habits have rendered 
needlework so delightful an avocation that we 
cannot think of relinquishing it, there are the 



254 MARY LAMB 

good ol^ contrivances in which our grand-dames 
were wont to beguile and lose their time — 
knitting, knotting, netting, carpet-work, and the 
like ingenious pursuits ^ — those so often praised 
but tedious works, which are so long in the 
operation that purchasing the labor has seldom 
been thought good economy. Yet by a certain 
fascination they have been found to chain down 
the great to a self-imposed slavery, from which 
they considerately or haughtily excused the 
needy. These may be esteemed lawful and 
lady-like amusements. But, if those works 
more usually denominated useful yield greater 
satisfaction, it might be a laudable scruple of 
conscience, and no bad test to herself of her 
own motive, if a lady who had no absolute need 
were to^give the money so saved to poor needle- 
women belonging to those branches of employ- 
ment from which she has borrowed these shares 
of pleasurable labor. ^ 

"Sempronia." 

Had Mary lived now she would, perhaps, have 
spoken a wiser word than has yet been uttered 
on the urgent question of how best to develop, 
strengthen, give free and fair scope to that large 
part of a woman's nature and field of action 
which are the same in kind as man's, without 
detriment to the remaining qualities and duties 



BUSY IDLENESS, 255 

peculiar to her as woman. She told Crabb Rob- 
inson that *' writing was a most painful occupa- 
tion, which only necessity could make her 
attempt ; and that she had been learning Latin 
merely to assist her in acquiring a correct 
style." But there is no trace of feebleness or 
confusion in her manner of grasping a subj ect ; 
no want of Latin nor of anything else to improve 
her excellent style. She did enough to show 
that had her brain not been devastated for 
weeks and latterly for months in every yea'r by 
an access of madness, she would have left, 
besides her tales for children, some permanent 
addition to literature, or given a recognizable 
impetus to thought. As it was, Mary relin- 
quished all attempt at literary work when an 
increase in Charles' income released her from 
the duty of earning ; and as her attacks became 
longer and more frequent, her "fingers grew 
nervously averse " even to letter- writing. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Letters to Miss Betham and her little Sister. — To 
Wordsworth. — Manning's Return. — Coleridge goes 
to Highgate. — Letter to Miss Hutchinson on Mary's 
State. — Removal to Russell Street. — Mary's Letter to 
Dorothy Wordsworth. — Lodgings at Dalston. — Death 
of John Lamb and Captain Burney. 

1815-21. — ^t. 51-57. 

In a letter to Southey, dated May i6th, 181 5, 
Lamb says : "Have you seen Matilda Betham's 
Lay of Marie ? I think it very delicately pretty 
as to sentiment, etc." 

Matilda, the daughter of a country clergyman 
of ancient lineage (author of learned and labo- 
rious Genealogical Tables ^ etc., etc.), was a lady 
of many talents and ambitions, especially of the 
laudable one, not so common in those days, to 
lighten the burthen of a large family of brothers 
and sisters by earning her own living. She 
went up to London, taught herself miniature 
painting, exhibited at ^Somerset House, gave 
Shakespeare readings, wrote a Biographical 
Dictionary of Celebrated Women^ contributed 
verses to the magazines, and last, not least, by 



MATILDA BETH AM. 257 

her genuine love of knowledge and her warm 
and kindly heart, won the cordial liking of many- 
men of genius, notably of Coleridge, Southey 
and the Lambs. When this same Lay of Marie 
was on the stocks Mary took an earnest interest 
in its success, as the following letter prettily 
testifies: — 

" My brother and myself return you a thou- 
sand thanks for your kind communication. We 
have read your poem many times over with 
increased interest, and very much wish to see 
you to tell you how highly we have been pleased 
with it. May we beg one favor .<* I keep the 
manuscript in the hope that you will grant it. 
It is that either now, or when the whole poem 
is completed, you will read it over with us. 
When I say 'with us,' of course I mean Charles. 
I know that you have many judicious friends, 
but I have so often known my brother spy out 
errors in a manuscript which has passed through 
many judicious hands, that I shall not be easy 
if you do not permit him to look yours carefully 
through with you ; and also you must allow him 
to correct the press for you. If I knew where 
to find you I would call upon you. Should you 
feel nervous at the idea of meeting Charles in 
the capacity of a severe censor, give me a line 
and I will come to you anywhere and convince 
you in five minutes that he is even timid, stam- 
9 



258 MARY LAMB. 

mers, and can scarcely speak for modesty and 
fear of giving pain, when he finds himself placed 
in that kind of office. Shall I appoint a time to 
see you here when he is from home ? I will 
send him out any time you will name ; indeed, 
I am always naturally alone till four o'clock. If 
you are nervous about coming, remember I am 
equally so about the liberty I have taken, and 
shall be till we meet and laugh off our mutual 
fears." 

"I return you by a careful hand the MSS.," 
wrote Charles. " Did I not ever love your 
verses .? The domestic half will be a sweet 
heirloom to have in the family. 'Tis fragrant 
with cordiality. What friends you must have 
had, or dreamed of having ! and what a widow's 
cruse of heartiness you have doled among 
them ! " 

But as to the correction of the press, that 
proved a rash suggestion on Mary's part ; for 
the task came at an untoward time, and Charles 
had to write a whimsical, repentant letter, 
which must have gone far to atone for his 
shortcoming : — 

"All this while I have been tormenting 
myself with the thought of having been un- 
gracious to you, and you have been all the 
while accusing yourself. Let us absolve one 
another and be quiet. My. head is in such a 



MATILDA BETH AM. 259 

state from incapacity for business, that I cer- 
tainly know it to be my duty not to undertake 
the veriest trifle in addition. I hardly know- 
how I can go on. I have tried to get some 
redress by explaining my health, but with no 
great success. No one can tell how ill I am, 
because it does not come out to the exterior 
of my face, but lies in my skull, deep and 
invisible. I wish I was leprous, and black- 
jaundiced skin-over, or that all was as well 
within as my cursed looks. You must not 
think me worse than I am. I am determined 
not to be overset, but to give up business 
rather, ' and get 'em to allow me a trifle for 
services past. Oh, that I had been a shoe- 
maker, or a baker, or a man of large, independ- 
ent fortune. Oh, darling laziness ! Heaven of 
Epicurus ! saint's everlasting rest ! that I could 
drink vast potations of thee through unmeas- 
ured eternity. Otitim cum vet sine dignitate. 
Scandalous, dishonorable, any kind of repose, 
I stand not upon the dignified sort. Accursed, 
damned desks, trade, commerce, business. In- 
ventions of that old original busy-body, brain- 
working Satan — Sabbathless, restless Satan. 
A curse relieves ; do you ever try it .? A 
strange letter to write to a lady, but more 
honeyed sentences will not distill. I dare not 
ask who revises in my stead. I have drawn 



26o MARY LAMB. 

you into a scrape, and am ashamed, but I know 
no remedy. My unwellness must be my 
apology. God bless you (tho' He curse the 
India House and fire it to the ground) ^ and may 
no unkind error creep into Marie, May all its 
readers like it as well as I do, and everybody 
about you like its kind author no worse ! Why 
the devil am I never to have a chance of 
scribbling my own free thoughts in verse or 
prose again } Why must I write of tea and 
drugs, and price goods and bales of indigo } 
Farewell." . 

Miss Betham possessed the further merit of 
having a charming little sister, for such she 
must surely have been to be the cause and the 
recipient of such a letter as the following from 
Marv. Barbara Betham was then fourteen 
years old : — 

*•' November 2, 18 14. 

" It is very long since I have met with such 
an agreeable surprise as the sight of your 
letter, my kind, kind young friend, afforded me. 
Such a nice letter as it is, too ; and what a 
pretty hand you write ! I congratulate you on 
this attainment with great pleasure, because I 
have so often felt the disadvantage of my own 
wretched handwriting. You wish for London 
news. I rely upon your sister Ann for gratify- 
ing you in this respect, yet I have been en- 



LETTER TO A CHILD. 26 1 

deavoring to recollect whom you might have 
seen he-re, and what may have happened to 
them since, and this effort has only brought 
the image of little Barbara Betham, uncon- 
nected with any other person, so strongly 
before my eyes, that I seem as if I had no 
other subject to write upon. Now I think I 
see you with your feet propped upon the fender, 
your two hands spread out upon your knees — 
an attitude you always chose when we were in 
familiar, confidential conversation together — 
telling me long stories of your own home, 
where now you say you are ' moping on with 
the same thing every day,' and which then 
presented nothing but pleasant recollections to 
your mind. How well I remember your quiet, 
steady face bent over your book ! One day, 
conscience-stricken at having wasted so much 
of your precious time in reading, and feeling 
yourself, as you prettily said, ^ quite useless to 
me,' you went to my drawers and hunted out 
some unhemmed pocket handkerchiefs, and by 
no means could I prevail upon you to resume 
your story-books till you had hemmed them all. 
I remember, too, your teaching my little maid 
to read, your sitting with her a whole evening 
to console her for the death of her sister, and 
that she in her turn endeavored to become a 
comforter to you the next evening, when you 



262 MARY LAMB. 

wept at the sight of Mrs. Holcroft, from whose 
school you had recently eloped because you 
were not partial to sitting in the stocks. Those 
tears, and a few you dropped when my brother 
teased you about your supposed fondness for 
an apple dumpling, were the only interruptions 
to the calm contentedness of your unclouded 
brow. 

"We still remain the same as you left us, 
neither taller nor wiser, or perceptibly older ; 
but three years must have made a great altera- 
tion in you. How very much, dear Barbara, I 
should like to see you ! 

" We still live in Temple Lane, but I am now 
sitting in a room you never saw. Soon after 
you left us we were distressed by the cries of a 
cat, which seemed to proceed from the garrets 
adjoining to ours, and only separated from ours 
by a locked door on the farther side of my 
brother's bed-room, which you know was the 
little room at the top of the kitchen stairs. 
We had the lock forced, and let poor puss out 
from behind a panel of the wainscot, and she 
lived with us from that time, for we were in 
gratitude bound to keep her, as she had intro- 
duced us to four untenanted, unowned rooms, 
and by degrees we have taken possession of 
these unclaimed apartments, first putting up 
lines to dry our clothes, then moving my broth- 



LETTER TO A CHILD. 263 

er's bed into one of these, more commodious 
than his own rooms ; and last winter, my brother 
being unable to pursue a work he had begun, 
owing to the kind interruptions of friends who 
were more at leisure than himself, I persuaded 
him that he might write at ease in one of these 
rooms, as he could not then hear the door-knock, 
or hear himself denied to be at home, which 
was sure to make him call out and convict the 
poor maid in a fib/ Here, I said, he might be, 
almost really not at home. So I put in an old 
grate, and made him a fire in the largest of 
these garrets, and carried in his own table and 
one chair, and bid him write away and consider 
himself as much alone as if he were in a lodging 
in the midst of Salisbury Plain, or any other 
wide, unfrequented place where he could expect 
few visitors to break in upon his solitude. I 
left him quite delighted with his new acquisi- 
tion ; but in a few hours he came down again, 
with a sadly dismal face. He could do nothing, 
he said, with those bare, whitewashed walls 
before his eyes. He could not write in that 
dull, unfurnished prison ! 

"The next day, before he came home from 
his office, I had gathered up various bits of old 
carpeting to cover the floor ; and to a little 
break the blank look of the bare walls I hung 
up a few old prints that used to ornament the 



264 MARY LAMB. 

kitchen ; and after dinner, with great boast of 
what improvement I had made, I took Charles 
once more into his new study. A week of busy- 
labors followed, in which I think you would not 
have disliked to be our assistant. My brother 
and I almost covered the walls with prints, for 
which purpose he cut out every print from 
every book in his old library, coming in every 
now and then to ask my leave to strip a fresh 
poor author, which he might not do, you know, 
without my permission, as I am an elder sister. 
There was such pasting, such consultation upon 
these portraits, and where the series of pictures 
from Ovid, Milton and Shakespeare would show 
to most advantage, and in what obscure corners 
authors of humble rank should be allowed to 
tell their stories. All the books gave up their 
stores but one, a translation from Ariosto, a 
delicious set of four-and-twenty prints, and for 
which I had marked out a conspicuous place; 
when lo ! we found, at the moment the scissors 
were going to work, that a part of the poem 
was printed at the back of every picture. 
What a cruel disappointment ! To conclude 
this long story about nothing, the poor, 
despised garret is now called the print-room, 
and is become our most familiar sitting-room. 
. . . The lions still live in Exeter Change. 
Returning home through the Strand, I often 



LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 265 

hear them roar about twelve o'clock at night. 
I never hear them without thinking of you, 
because you seemed so pleased with the sight 
of them, and said your young companions would 
stare when you told them you had seen a lion. 

" And now, my dear Barbara, farewell, I 
have not written such -a long letter a long time, 
but I am very sorry I had nothing amusing to 
write about. Wishing you may pass happily 
through the rest of your school-days and every 
future day of your life, 
"I remain 

" Your affectionate friend, 

'' M. Lamb. 

** My brother sends his love to you. You 
say you are not so tall as Louisa — you must 
be ; you cannot so degenerate from the rest of 
your family." ["The measureless Bethams," 
Lamb called them.] "Now you have begun, I 
shall hope to have the pleasure of hearing from 
you again. I shall always receive a letter from 
you with very great delight." 

The next is a joint letter to Wordsworth, 
in acknowledgment of an early copy of The 
Excursion, in which Charles holds the pen and 
is the chief spokesman ; but Mary puts in a 
judicious touch of her own : — 



266 MARY LAMB. 

"August 14TH, 18 14. 
"I cannot tell you how pleased I was at the 
receipt of the great armful of poetry which you 
have sent me ; and to get it before the rest of 
the world, too ! I have gone quite through 
with it, and was thinking to have accomplished 
that pleasure a second time before I wrote to 
thank you, but Mr. Burney came in the night 
(while we were out) and made holy theft of it ; 
but we expect restitution in a day or two. It 
is the noblest conversational poem I ever 
read — a day in Heaven. The part (or rather 
main body) which has left the sweetest odor on 
my memory (a bad term for the remains of an 
impression so recent) is the Tales of the Church- 
yard ; the only girl among seven brethren born 
out of due time, and not duly taken away again ; 
the deaf man and the blind man ; the Jacobite 
and the Hanoverian, whom antipathies recon- 
cile ; the Scarron entry of the rusticating par- 
son upon his solitude ; — these were all new to 
me too. My having known the story of Mar- 
garet (at the beginning), a very old acquaint- 
ance, even as long back as when I first saw you 
at Stowey, did not make her reappearance less 
fresh. I don't know what to pick out of this 
best of books upon the best subjects for partial 
naming. That gorgeous sunset is famous ; I 
think it must have been the identical one we 



LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 267 

saw on Salisbury Plain five years ago, that drew 
Phillips from the card-table, where he had sat 
from the rise of that luminary to its unequalled 
set ; but neither he nor I had gifted eyes to see 
those symbols of common things glorified, such 
as the prophet saw them in that sunset — the 
wheel, the potter's clay, the wash-pot, the wine- 
press, the almond-tree rod, the basket of figs, 
the four-fold visaged head, the throne and Him 
that sat thereon." [It was a mist glorified by 
sunshine, not a sunset, which the poet had 
described, as Lamb afterwards discovered.] 
" One feeling I was particularly struck with, as 
what I recognized so very lately at Harrow 
Church on entering it after a hot and secular 
day's pleasure, the instantaneous coolness, and 
calming, almost transforming, properties of a 
country church just entered; a certain fra- 
grance which it has, either from its holiness or 
being kept shut all the week, or the air that is 
let in being pure country, exactly what you 
have reduced into words ; but I am feeling that 
which I cannot express. Reading your lines 
about it fixed me for a time, a monument in 
Harrow Church. Do you know it .'' With its 
fine long spire, white as washed marble, to be 
seen, by vantage of its high site, as far as Salis- 
bury spire itself, almost. 

*' I shall select a day or two very shortly, when 



268 MARY LAMB. 

I am coolest in brain, to have a steady second 
reading, which I feel will lead to many more, for 
it will be a stock-book with me while eyes or 
spectacles shall be lent me. There is a great 
deal of noble matter about mountain scenery, 
yet not so much as to overpower and discounte- 
nance a poor Londoner or south countryman 
entirely, though Mary seems to have felt it 
occasionally a little too powerfully ; for it was 
her remark during reading it that by your 
system it was doubtful if a liver in towns had a 
soul to be saved. She almost trembled for that 
invisible part of us in her. 

" C. Lamb and Sister." 

Manning, who had lately been " tarrying on 
the skirts of creation " in far Thibet and Tar- 
tary, beyond the reach even of letters, now at 
last, in 1815, appeared once more on the horizon 
at the " half-way house " of Canton, to which 
place Lamb hazarded a letter — a most incom- 
parable "lying letter," and another to confess 
the cheat, to St. Helena: — ''Have you recov- 
ered the breathless, stone-staring astonishment 
into which you must have been thrown upon 
learning at landing that an Emperor of France 
was living in St. Helena } What an event in 
the solitude of the seas ! like finding a fish's 
bone at the top of Plinlimmon. . . . Mary 



MANNING AND COLERIDGE. 269 

reserves a portion of your silk, not to be buried 
in (as the false Nuncio asserts), but to make 
up spick and span into a brand-new gown to 
wear when you come. I am the same as when 
you knew me, almost to a surfeiting identity. 
This very night I am going to leave off tobacco ! 
Surely there must be some other world in which 
this unconquerable purpose shall be realized. 
The soul hath not her generous aspirings im- 
planted in her in vain." 

Manning brought with him on his return 
much material for compiling a Chinese diction- 
ary ; which purpose, however, remained unful- 
filled. He left no other memorial of himself 
than his friendship with Lamb. " You see but 
his husk or shrine. He discloses not, save to 
select worshipers, and will leave the world 
without any one hardly but me knowing how 
stupendous a creature he is," said Lamb of him. 
Henceforth their intercourse was chiefly per- 
sonal. 

Coleridge, also, who of late had been almost 
as much lost to his friends as if he too were in 
Tartary or Thibet, though now and then " like 
a reappearing star" standing up before them 
when least expected, was at the beginning of 
April, 1 8 16, once more in London, endeavoring 
to get his tragedy of Remorse accepted at 
Covent Garden. ( " Nature, who conducts every 



270 MARV LAMB. 

creature by instinct to its best endj'ihas skil- 
fully directed C. to take up his abode at a chem- 
ist's laboratory in Norfolk street," writes Lamb 
to Wordsworth. " She might as well have 
sent a Helluo Liboruin for cure to the Vatican. 
He has done pretty well as yet. Tell Miss 
Hutchinson my sister is every day wishing to 
be quietly sitting down to answer her very kind 
letter, but while C. stays she can hardly find a 
quiet time. God bless him ! " 

But Coleridge was more in earnest than Lamb 
supposed in his determination to break through 
his thraldom to opium. Either way, he himself 
believed that death was imminent : to go on 
was deadly, and a physician of eminence had 
told him that to abstain altogether would proba- 
bly be equally fatal. He therefore found a 
medical man willing to undertake the care of 
him ; to exercise absolute surveillance for a 
time and watch the results. It is an affecting 
letter in which he commits himself into Mr. 
Gillman's hands : " You will never hear any- 
thing but truth from me. Prior habits render 
it out of my power to tell an untruth, but unless 
carefully observed I dare not promise that I 
should not, with regard to this detested poison, 
be capable of acting one. ... For the first 
week I must not be permitted to leave your 
house, unless with you. Delicately or indeli- 



COLERIDGE. 2/1 

cately, this must be done, and both the servants 
and the assistant must receive absolute com- 
mands from you. The stimulus of conversation 
suspends the terror that haunts my mind ; but 
when I am alone the horrors I have suffered 
from laudanum, the degradation, the blighted 
utility, almost overwhelm me. If (as I feel for 
the first time a soothing confidence it will 
prove) I should leave you restored to my moral 
and bodily health, it is not myself only that will 
love and honor you ; every friend I have (and, 
thank God ! in spite of this wretched vice I 
have many and warm ones, who were friends of 
my youth and have never deserted me) will 
thank you with reverence." That confidence 
was justified, those thanks well earned. In the 
middle of April, 1816, Coleridge took up his 
abode with the Gillmans at No. 3, the Grove, at 
Highgate, and found there a serene haven in 
which he anchored for the rest of life ; freeing 
himself by slow degrees from the opium bond- 
age, though too shattered in frame ever to 
recover sound health ; too far spent, morally 
and mentally, by the long struggles and abase- 
ments he had gone through to renew the splen- 
dors of his youth. That "shaping spirit of 
imagination " with which nature had endowed 
him drooped languidly, save in fitful moments 
of fervid talk; that "fertile, subtle, expansive 



2/2 MARY LAMB. 

understanding " could not fasten with the long- 
sustained intensity needful to grapple victo- 
riously with the great problems that filled his 
mind. The look of ''timid earnestness" which 
Carlyle noted in his eyes expressed a mental 
attitude — a mixture of boldness and fear, a 
desire to seek truth at all hazards, yet also to 
drag authority with him, as a safe and comfort- 
able prop to rest on. But his eloquence had 
lost none of its richness and charm, his voice 
none of its sweetness. '' His face, when he 
repeats his verses, hath its ancient glory,- — an 
archangel a little damaged," says Lamb to 
Wordsworth. " He is absent but four miles, 
and the neighborhood of such a man is as excit- 
ing as the presence of fifty ordinary persons. 
'Tis enough to be within the whiff and wind of 
his genius for us not to possess our souls in 
quiet." 

Besides the renewed proximity of these two 
oldest and dearest of friends, two new ones, 
both very young, both future biographers of 
Lamb, were in these years added to the number 
of his intimates, — Talfourd in 1815, Proctor in 
18 1 7. Leigh Hunt had become one probably 
as early as 181 2; Crabb Robinson in 1806; 
Thomas Hood, who stood in the front rank of 
his younger friends, and Bernard Barton, the 
Quaker poet. Lamb's chief correspondent dur- 



COLERIDGE. 2/3 

ing the last ten years of his life, not until 
1822-3. 

The years did not pass without each bringing 
a recurrence of one, sometimes of two, severe 
attacks of Mary's disorder. In the autumn of 
18 1 5 Charles repeats again the sad story to 
Miss Hutchinson : — 

" I am forced to be the replier to your letter, 
for Mary has been ill and gone from home these 
five weeks yesterday. She has left me very 
lonely and very miserable. I stroll about ; but 
there is no rest but at one's own fire-side, and 
there is no rest for me there now. I look for- 
ward to the worse half being past, and keep up 
as well as I can. She has begun to show some 
favorable symptoms. The return of her disor- 
der has been frightfully soon this time, with 
scarce a six-months' interval. I am almost 
afraid my worry of spirits about the E. I. House 
was partly the cause of her illness ; but one 
always imputes it to the cause next at hand ; 
more probably it comes from some cause we^ 
have no control over or conjecture of. It cuts 
sad, great slices out of the time, the little time 
we shall have to live together. I don't know but 
the recurrence of these illnesses might help me 
to sustain her death better than if we had no 
partial separations. But I won't talk of death. 
I will imagine us immortal, or forget that we are 



274 MARY LAMB. 

Otherwise. By God's blessing, in a few weeks 
we may be taking our meal together, or sitting 
in the front row of the pit at Drury Lane, or 
taking our evening walk past the theaters, to 
look at the outside of them at least, if not to be 
tempted in. Then we forget we are assailable ; 
we are strong for the time as rocks — * the 
wind is tempered to the shorn Lambs.' Poor 
C. Lloyd " [he was suffering from the same 
dread malady] ! ''poor Priscilla! I feel I hardly 
feel enough for him ; my own calamities press 
about me and involve me in a thick integument 
not to be reached at by other folks' misfor- 
tunes. But I feel all I can — all the kindness I 
can towards you all." 

More and more sought by an enlarging circle 
of friends, chambers in the Temple offered 
facilities for the dropping in of acquaintance 
upon the Lambs at all hours of the day and 
night, which, social as they were, was harassing, 
wearing, and to Mary very injurious. This it 
was, doubtless, which induced them to take the 
step announced by her in the following letter 
to Dorothy Wordsworth: — 

•''November 21, 181 7. 
"Your kind letter has given us very much 
pleasure ; the sight of your handwriting was a 
most welcome surprise to us. We have heard 



LETTER TO DOROTHY. 275 

good tidings of you by all our friends who were 
so fortunate as to visit you this summer, and 
rejoice to see it confirmed by yourself. You 
have quite the advantage in volunteering a let- 
ter; there is no merit in replying to so welcome 
a stranger. 

" We have left the Temple. I think you will 
be sorry to hear this. I know I have never 
been so well satisfied with thinking of you at 
Rydal Mount as when I could connect the idea 
of you with your own Grasmere Cottage. Our 
rooms were dirty and out of repair, and tl^e 
inconveniences of living in chambers became 
every year more irksome, and so at last we 
mustered up resolution enough to leave the 
good old place that so long had sheltered us, 
and here we are, living at a brazier's shop. No. 
20, in Russell street, Covent Garden, a place all 
alive with noise and bustle ; Drury Lane The- 
ater in sight from our front and Covent Gar- 
den from our back windows. The hubbub of 
the carriages returning from the play does not 
annoy me in the least ; strange that it does not, 
for it is quite tremendous. I quite enjoy look- 
ing out of the window and listening to the call- 
ing up of the carriages and the squabbles of the 
coachmen and link-boys. It is the oddest scene 
to look down upon; I am sure you would be 
amused with it. It is well I am in a cheerful 



2/6 MARY LAMB. 

place, or I should have many misgivings about 
leaving the Temple. I look forward with great 
pleasure to the prospect of seeing my good 
friend, Miss Hutchinson. I wish Rydal Mount, 
with all its inhabitants inclosed, were to be 
transplanted with her, and to remain stationary 
in the midst of Covent Garden. I passed 
through the street lately where Mr. and Mrs. 
Wordsworth lodged ; several fine new houses, 
which were then just rising out of the ground, 
are quite finished, and a noble entrance made 
that way into Portland place. I am very sorry 
for Mr. De Quincey. What a blunder the poor 
man made when he took up his dwelling among 
the mountains ! I long to see my friend Pypos. 
Coleridge is still at Little Hampton with Mrs. 
Gillman ; he has been so ill as to be confined to 
his room almost the whole time he has been 
there. 

''Charles has had all his Hogarths bound in 
a book ; they were sent home yesterday, and 
now that I have them all together, and perceive 
the advantage of peeping close at them through 
my spectacles, I am reconciled to the loss of 
their hanging round the room, which has been 
a great mortification to me. In vain I tried to 
console myself with looking at our new chairs 
and carpets, for we have got new chairs 
and carpets covering all over our two sitting- 



SUBURBAN LODGINGS, 2// 

rooms ; I missed my old friends and could not 
be comforted. Then I would resolve to learn 
to look out of the window, a habit I never could 
attain in my life, and I have given it up as a 
thing quite impracticable ; yet, when I was at 
Brighton last summer, the first week I never 
took my eyes off from the sea, not even to look 
in a book : I had not seen the sea for sixteen 
years. Mrs. Morgan, who was with us, kept 
her liking, and continued her seat in the win- 
dow till the very last, while Charles and I 
played truants and wandered among the hills, 
which we magnified into little mountains, and 
almost as good as Westmoreland scenery. Cer- 
tainly we made discoveries of many pleasant 
walks, which few of the Brighton visitors have 
ever dreamed of ; for, like as is the case in the 
neighborhood of London, after the first two or 
three miles we are sure to find ourselves in a 
perfect solitude. I hope we shall meet before 
the walking faculties of either of us fail. You 
say you can walk fifteen miles with ease ; that 
is exactly my stint, and more fatigues me ; four 
or five miles every third or fourth day, keejDing 
very quiet between, was all Mrs. Morgan could 
accomplish. God bless you and yours. Love 
to all and each one." 

In the spring of 1820 the Lambs took lodg- 
ings at Stoke Newington, without, however, 



2"]% MARY LAMB. 

giving up the Russell street home, — for the 
sake of rest and quiet ; the change from the 
Temple to Covent Garden not having proved 
much of a success in that respect, and the 
need grown serious. Even Lamb's mornings 
at the office and his walk thence were besieged 
by officious acquaintance : then, as he tells 
Wordsworth, *^ Up I go, mutton on table, hun- 
gry as a hunter, hope to forget my cares, and 
bury them in the agreeable abstraction of 
mastication. Knock at the door; in comes 
Mr. Hazlitt, or Mr. Burney, or Morgan Demi- 
Gorgon, or my brother, or somebody, to pre- 
vent my eating alone — a process absolutely 
necessary to my poor wretched digestion. Oh, 
the pleasure of eating alone ! eating my dinner 
alone ! let me think of it. But in they come, 
and make it absolutely necessary that I should 
open a bottle of orange ; for my meat turns 
into a stone when any one dines with me if I 
have not wine. Wine can mollify stones ; then 
that wine turns into acidity, acerbity, misan- 
thropy, a hatred of my interrupters (God bless 
'em ! I love some of 'em dearly), and with 
the hatred a still greater aversion to their going 
away. Bad is the dead sea they bring upon 
me, choking and deadening ; but worse is the 
deader dry sand they leave me on if they go 
before bed-time. Come never, I would say to 



SUBURBAN LODGINGS. 2'79 

these spoilers of my dinner ; but if you come, 
never go ! . . . Evening company I should 
like, had I any mornings, but I am saturated 
with human faces {divine, forsooth !) and voices 
all the golden morning ; and five evenings in a 
week would be as much as I should covet to 
be in company ; but I assure you that is a 
wonderful week in which I can get two or one 
to myself. I am never C. L., but always C. L. 
& Co. He who thought it not good for man 
to be alone preserve me from the more pro- 
digious monstrosity of being never by myself ! 
I forget bed-time, but even there these sociable 
frogs clamber up to annoy me." . . . 

It was during the Russell street days that 
the Lambs made the acquaintance of Vincent 
Novello. He had a little daughter, Mary 
Victoria, afterwards Mrs. Cowden Clarke, whose 
heart Mary won, leaving many sweet and happy 
impressions of herself graven there, which 
eventually took shape in her Recollections of 
Writers. Mrs. Novello had lost a baby in the 
spring of 1820, and from the quiet of Stoke 
Newington Mary wrote her a sweet letter of 

condolence : — 

"Spring, 1820. 

" Since we heard of your sad sorrow, you 
have been perpetually in our thoughts ; there- 
fore you may well imagine how welcome your 



28o AfARY LAMB. 

kind remembrance of us must be. I know 
not how to thank you for it. You bid me 
write a long letter ; but my mind is so possessed 
with the idea that you must be occupied with 
one only thought, that all trivial matters seem 
impertinent. I have just been reading again 
Mr. Hunt's delicious essay [^Deaths of Little 
Children\ which, I am sure, must have come 
so home to your hearts. I shall always love 
him for it. I feel that it is all that one can 
think, but which no one but he could have done 
so prettily. May he lose the memory of his 
own babies in seeing them all grow old around 
him. Together with the recollection of your 
dear baby, the image of a little sister I once 
had comes as fresh into my mind as if I had 
seen her lately. ... I long to see you, and I 
hope to do so on Tuesday or Wednesday in 
next week. Percy street ! I love to write the 
word. What comfortable ideas it brings with 
it ! We have been pleasing ourselves, ever 
since we heard this unexpected piece of good 
news, with the anticipation of frequent drop-in 
visits and all the social comfort of what seems 
almost next-door neighborhood. 

"Our solitary confinement has answered its 
purpose even better than I expected. It is so 
many years since I have been out of town in 
the spring that I scarcely knew of the existence 



LETTER TO MRS. NOVELLO. 28 1 

of such a season. I see every day some new 
flower peeping out of the ground, and watch its 
growth ; so that I have a sort of intimate friend- 
ship with each. I know the effect of every 
change of weather upon them — have learned 
all their names, the duration of their lives, and 
the whole progress of their domestic economy. 
My landlady, a nice, active old soul that wants 
but one year of eighty, and her daughter, a 
rather aged young gentlewoman, are the only 
laborers in a pretty large garden ; for it is a 
double house, and two long strips of ground are 
laid into one, well stored with fruit-trees, which 
will be in full blossom the week after I am 
gone, and flowers, as many as can be crammed 
in, of all sorts and kinds. But flowers are 
flowers still ; and I must confess I would rather 
live in Russell street all my life, and never set 
my foot but on London pavement, than be 
doomed always to enjoy the silent pleasures I 
now do. We go to bed at ten o'clock. Late 
hours are life-shortening things, but I would 
rather run all risks, and sit every night — at 
some places I could name — wishing in vain at 
eleven o'clock for the entrance of the supper 
tray, than be always up and alive at eight 
o'clock breakfast, as I am here. We have a 
scheme to reconcile these things. W^e have an 
offer of a very low-rented lodging a mile nearer 



282 ' MARY LAMB. 

town than this. Our notion is to divide our 
time in alternate weeks between quiet rest and 
dear London weariness. We give an answer 
to-morrow ; but what that will be at this pres- 
ent writing I am unable to say. In the present 
state of our undecided opinion, a very heavy 
rain that is now falling may turn the scale. . . . 
Dear rain, do go away, and let us have a fine, 
chearful sunset to argue the matter fairly in. 
My brother walked seventeen miles yesterday 
before dinner. And, notwithstanding his long 
walk to and from the office, we walk every even- 
ing ; but I by no means perform in this way so 
well as I used to do. A twelve-mile walk, one 
hot Sunday morning, made my feet blister, and 
they are hardly well now." . 

"A fine, cheerful sunset" did smile, it seems, 
upon the project of permanent country lodg- 
ings ; for during the next three years the 
Lambs continued to alternate between "dear 
London weariness " in Russell street, and rest 
and quiet work at Dalston. Years they were 
which produced nearly all the most delightful of 
the Essays of Elia. 

The year 1821 closed gloomily: "I stepped 
into the Lambs' cottage at Dalston," writes 
Crabb Robinson in his diary, Nov. 18. '* Mary 
pale and thin, just recovered from one of her 
attacks. They have lost their brother John and 



LOSS OF FRIENDS. 28-5 

feel the loss." And the very same week died 
fine old Captain Burney. He had been made 
Admiral but a fortnight before his death. 
These gaps among the old familiar faces struck 
chill to their hearts. In a letter to Wordsworth, 
of the following spring, Lamb says: ''We are 
pretty well, save colds and rheumatics, and a 
certain deadness to everything, which I think I 
may date from poor John's loss, and another 
accident or two at the same time that have 
made me almost bury myself at Dalston, where 
yet I see more faces than I could wish. Deaths 
overset one and put one out long after the 
recent grief. Two or three have died within 
the last two twelvemonths, and so many parts 
of me have been numbed. One sees a picture, 
reads an anecdote, starts a casual fancy, and 
thinks to tell of it to this person in preference 
to every other; the person is gone whom it 
w^ould have peculiarly suited. It won't do for 
another. Every departure destroys a class of 
sympathies. There's Captain Burney gone ! 
What fun has whist now.? What matters it 
what you lead if you can no longer fancy him 
looking over you 1 One never hears anything, 
but the image of the particular person occurs 
with whom alone, almost, you would care to 
share the intelligence. Thus one distributes 
one's self about, and now for so many parts of 



284 MARY LAMB, 

me I have lost the market." It was while 
John's death was yet recent that Lamb wrote 
some tender recollections of him (fact and 
fiction blended according to ''Ella's" wont) in 
Dream Children, a Reverie, telling how hand- 
some and spirited he had been in his youth, 
"and how, when he died, though he had not 
been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died 
a great while ago, such a distance there is 
betwixt life and death ; and how I bore his 
death, as I thought, pretty well at first, but 
afterwards it haunted and haunted me; and 
though I did not cry or take it to heart as some 
do, and as I think he would have done if I had 
died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew 
not till then how much I had loved him. I 
missed his kindness and I missed his crossness, 
and wished him to be alive again to 'be quarrel- 
ing with him (for we quarreled sometimes), 
rather than not have him again." 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Hazlitt's Divorce. — Emma Isola. — Mrs. Cowden Clarke's 
Recollections oi Mary. — The Visit to France. — Removal 
to Colebrook Cottage. — A Dialogue of Reminiscences. 

1822-3. — MX. 58-59. 

For some years matters had not gone smoothly 
between Sara Hazlitt and her husband. He 
was hard to live with, and she seems to have 
given up the attempt to make the best of things, 
and to have sunk into a kind of apathy in which 
even the duties of a housewife were ill per- 
formed ; but his chief complaint was that " she 
despised him and his abilities." In this, Haz- 
litt was, probably, unjust to Sara; for she was 
neither stupid nor unamiable. From 18 19 
onwards he had absented himself from home 
continually, living either at the Huts, a small 
inn on the edge of Salisbury Plain, or in Lon- 
don lodgings. But in this year of 1822 his 
unhappy passion for Sarah Walker brought 
about a crisis ; and what had been only a neg- 
ative kind of evil became unendurable. He 
prevailed upon Sara to consent to a divorce. 



286 MA/^V LAMB. 

It was obtained, in Edinburgh, by Mrs. Hazlitt 
taking what, in Scotch law, is called '' the oath 
of calumny," which — the suit being unde- 
fended — entitled her to a dissolution of the 
marriage tie. They then returned singly to 
Winterslow, he to the Huts and she to her cot- 
tage. If they married with but little love, they 
seem to have parted without any hate. One 
tie remained — the strong affection each had 
for their son, who was sometimes with one, 
sometimes with the other. Hazlitt's wholly 
unrequited passion for Sarah Walker soon 
burned itself to ashes ; and in two years' time 
he tried another experiment in marriage which 
was even less successful than the first ; for his 
bride, like Milton's, declined to return home 
with him after the wedding tour, and he saw 
her face no more. But, unlike Milton, he was 
little discomposed at the circumstance. Sara, 
grown a wiser if not a more dignified woman, 
did not renew the scheming ways of her youth. 
She continued to stand high in the esteem of 
Hazlitt's mother and sister, and often stayed 
with them. The Lambs abated none of their 
old cordiality ; Mary wrote few letters now, but 
Charles sent her a friendly one sometimes. It 
was to her he gave the first account of absent- 
minded George Dyer's feat of walking straight 
into the New River, in broad daylight, on leav- 



EMMA ISOLA. 287 

ing their door in Colebrook Row. Towards 
Hazlitt, also, their friendship seemed substan- 
tially unchanged, let him be as splenetic and 
wayward as he might. " We cannot afford to 
cast off our friends because they are not all we 
could wish," said Mary Lamb once when he had 
written some criticisms on Wordsworth and 
Coleridge, in which glowing admiration was 
mixed with savage ridicule in such a way that, 
as Lamb said, it was *' like saluting a man : 
* Sir, you are the greatest man I ever saw,' and 
then pulling him by the nose." But it needed 
only for Hazlitt himself to be traduced and vil- 
ified, as he so often was, by the political adver- 
saries and critics of those days, for Lamb to 
rally to his side and fearlessly pronounce him 
to be, " in his natural and healthy state, one of 
the wisest and finest spirits breathing." 

As a set-off against the already mentioned 
sorrows of this time, a new element of cheer- 
fulness was introduced into the Lamb house- 
hold ; for it was in the course of the summer 
of 1823 that, during a visit to Cambridge, they 
first saw Emma Isola, a little orphan child, of 
whom they soon grew so fond that eventually 
she became their adopted daughter, their solace 
and comfort. To Mary especially was this a 
happy incident. "For," says Mrs. Cowden 
Clarke in the Recollections already alluded to, 



288 MARV LAMB. 

" she had a most tender sympathy with the 
young," — as the readers of Mj^s. Leicester's 
School will hardly need telling. " She was 
encouraging and affectionate towards them, 
and won them to regard her with a familiarity 
and fondness rarely felt by them for grown 
people who are not their relations. She threw 
herself so entirely into their way of thinking 
and contrived to take an estimate of things so 
completely from their point of view, that she 
made them rejoice to have her for their co- 
mate in affairs that interested them. While 
thus lending herself to their notions, she, with 
a judiciousness peculiar to her, imbued her 
words with the wisdom and experience that 
belonged to her maturer years ; so that while 
she seemed but the listening, concurring friend, 
she was also the helping, guiding friend. Her 
monitions never took the form of reproof, but 
were always dropped in with the air of agreed 
propositions, as if they grew out of the subject 
in question, and presented themselves as mat- 
ters of course to both her young companions 
and herself." The following is a life-like 
picture, from the same hand, of Mary among 
the children she gathered round her in these 
Russell street days — Hazlitt's little son Wil- 
liam, Victoria Novello (Mrs. Clarke herself) 
and Emma Isola. Victoria used "to come to 



EMMA I SOLA. 289 

her on certain mornings, when Miss Lamb 
promised to hear her repeat her Latin grammar, 
and hear her read poetry with the due music- 
ally rhythmical intonation. Even now the 
breathing murmur of the voice in which Mary 
Lamb gave low but melodious utterance to 
those opening lines of the Paradise Lost : — 

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste 
Brought death into the world and all pur woe, — 

sounding full and rounded and harmonious, 
though so subdued in tone, rings clear and 
distinct in the memory of her who heard the 
reader. The echo of that gentle voice vibrates, 
through the lapse of many a revolving year, 
true and unbroken in the heart where the low- 
breathed sound first awoke response, teaching 
together with the fine appreciation of verse- 
music the finer love of intellect conjoined with 
goodness and kindness. . . . One morning, 
just as Victoria was about to repeat her allotted 
task, in rushed a young boy who, like herself, 
enjoyed the privilege of Miss Lamb's instruc- 
tion in the Latin language. His mode of 
entrance, hasty and abrupt, sufficiently denoted 
his eagerness to have his lesson heard at once 
and done with, that he might be gone again ; 
accordingly Miss Lamb, askir^g Victoria to give 
10 



290 MARY LAMB. 

up her turn, desired the youth, Hazlitt's son, 
to repeat his pages of grammar first. Off 
he set; rattled through the first conjugation 
post-haste ; darted through the second without 
drawing breath ; and so on right through in no 
time. The rapidity, the volubility, the tri- 
umphant slap-dash of the feat perfectly dazzled 
the imagination of poor Victoria, who stood 
admiring by, an amazed witness of the boy's 
proficiency. She herself, a quiet, plodding 
little girl, had only by dint of diligent study 
and patient, persevering poring, been able to 
achieve a slow learning and as slow a repetition 
of her lessons. This brilliant, off-hand method 
of dispatching the Latin grammar was a glory 
she had never dreamed of. Her ambition was 
fired, and the next time she presented herself 
book in hand before Miss Lamb, she had no 
sooner delivered it into her hearer's than she 
attempted to scour through her verb at the 
same rattling pace which had so excited her 
admiration. Scarce a moment and her stum- 
bling scamper was checked. ' Stay, stay ! how's 
this ? What are you about, little Vicky .? ' 
asked the laughing voice of Mary Lamb. ' Oh, 
I see. Well, go on ; but gently, gently ; no 
need of hurry.' She heard to an end, and then 
said: ' I see what we have been doing — trying 
to be. as quick and clever as William, fancying 



MRS. CLARKE'S RECOLLECTIONS, 291 

it vastly grand to get on at a great rate, as he 
does. But there's this difference : it's natural 
in him, while it's imitation in you./ Now, far 
better go on in your old staid way — which is 
your own way — than try to take up a way that 
may become him, but can never become you, 
even were you to succeed in acquiring it. 
/We'll each of us keep to our own natural ways, 
and then we shall be sure to do our best.' 
And when Victoria and Emma Isola met there, 
Mary entered into their girlish friendship ; let 
them have their gossip out in her own room if 
tired of the restraint of grown-up company; 
and once, before Emma's return to school, took 
them to Dulwich and gave them a charming 
little dinner of roast fowl and custard pudding." 
..." Pleasant above all," says the surviv- 
ing guest and narrator, '' is the memory of the 
cordial voice, which said, in a way to put the 
little party at its fullest ease, ' Now, remember, 
we all pick our bones. It isn't considered 
vulgar here to pick bones.' 

'' Once, when some visitors chanced to drop 
in unexpectedly upon her and her brother," 
continues Mrs. Clarke, "just as they were sit- 
ting down to their plain dinner of a bit of roast 
mutton, with her usual frank hospitality she 
pressed them to stay and partake, cutting up 
the small joint into five equal portions, and say- 



292 MARY LAMB. 

ing in her simple, easy way, so truly her own : 
* There's a chop apiece for us, and we can make 
up with bread and cheese if we want more. ' " 

The more serious demands upon her sympa- 
thy and judgment made, after childhood was 
left behind, by the young, whether man or 
woman, she met with no less tenderness, tact 
and wisdom. Once, for instance, when she 
thought she perceived symptoms of an unex- 
plained dejection in her young friend Victoria, 
"how gentle was her sedate mode of reasoning 
the matter, after delicately touching upon the 
subject and endeavoring to draw forth its 
avowal ! More as if mutually discussing and con- 
sulting than as if questioning, she endeavored 
to ascertain whether uncertainties or scruples 
of faith had arisen in the young girl's mind and 
had caused her preoccupied, abstracted manner. 
If it were any such source of disturbance, how 
wisely and feelingly she suggested reading, 
reflecting, weighing ; if but a less deeply-seated 
depression, how sensibly she advised adopting 
some object to rouse energy and interest ! She 
pointed out the efficacy of studying a language 
(she herself at upwards of fifty years of age 
began the acquirement of French and Italian) 
as a remedial measure, and advised Victoria to 
devote herself to a younger brother she had, 
in the same way that she had attended to her 



FRAGMENTS OF TALK. 293 

own brother Charles in his infancy, as the 
wholesomest and surest means of all for cure." 

Allsop, Coleridge's friend, speaks in the same 
strain of how when a young man, overwhelmed 
with what then seemed the hopeless ruin of his 
prospects, he found Charles and Mary Lamb 
not wanting in the hour of need. **I have a 
clear recollection," says he, *^of Miss Lamb's 
addressing me in a tone which acted at once as 
a solace and support, and after as a stimulus, 
to which I owe more perhaps than to the more 
extended arguments of all others." 

On the whole Mary was a silent woman. It 
was her forte rather to enable others to talk 
their best by the charm of an earnest, speaking 
countenance and a responsive manner ; and 
there are but few instances in which any of her 
words have been preserved. In that memora- 
ble conversation at Lamb's table on '^ persons 
one would like to have seen," reported by Haz- 
litt, when it was a question of women : '' I 
should like vastly to have seen Ninon de 
L'Enclos," said Mary. When Queen Caroline's 
trial was pending and her character and con- 
duct the topic in every mouth, Mary said she 
did not see that it made much difference whether 
the Queen was what they called guilty or not — 
meaning, probably, that the stream was so 
plainly muddy at the fountain-head, it was idle 



294 MARY LAMB. 

to inquire what ill places it had passed through 
in its course. Or else, perhaps, that, either 
way, the King's conduct was equally odious. 

The last observation of hers I can find 
recorded is at first sight unlike herself: "How 
stupid old people are ! " It was that unimagina- 
tive incapacity to sympathize with the young, 
so alien to her own nature, no doubt, which 
provoked the remark. Of her readiness to help 
all that came within her reach there is a side- 
glimpse in some letters of Lamb's — the latest 
to see the light, — which come, as other inter- 
esting contributions to the knowledge of Lamb's 
writings have done (notably those of the late 
Mr. Babson), from over the Atlantic. In The 
Century magazine for September, 1882, are 
seven letters to John Howard Payne, an Ameri- 
can playwright, whom Lamb was endeavoring 
to help in his but partially successful struggle 
to earn a livelihood by means of adaptations 
for the stage in London and Paris. Mrs. Cow- 
den Clarke speaks of this Mr. Payne as the 
acquaintance whom Mary Lamb, " ever thought- 
ful to procure a pleasure for young people," had 
asked to call and see the little Victoria, then at 
school at Boulogne, on his way to Paris. He 
proved a good friend to Mary herself during 
that trip to France which, with a courage 
amounting to rashness, she and Charles under- 
took in the summer of 1822. 



JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. 295 

** I went to call on the Lambs to take leave, 
they setting out for France next morning," 
writes Crabb Robinson in his diary, June 17th. 
" I gave Miss Lamb a letter for Miss Williams, 
to whom I sent a copy of Mrs. Leicester s School. 
The Lambs have a Frenchman as their compan- 
ion, and Miss Lamb's nurse, in case she should 
be ill. Lamb was in high spirits; his sister 
rather nervous." 

The privation of sleep entailed in such a jour- 
ney, combined with the excitement, produced 
its inevitable result, and Mary was taken with 
one of her severest attacks in the diligence on 
the way to Amiens. There, happily, they seem 
to have found Mr. Payne, who assisted Charles 
to make the necessary arrangements for her 
remaining under proper care till the return of 
reason, and then he went on to Paris, where he 
stayed with the Kennys, who thought him dull 
and out of sorts, as well he might be. Two 
months afterwards we hear of Mary as being 
in Paris. Charles, his holiday over, had been 
obliged to return to England. 

" Mary Lamb has begged me to give her a 
day or two," says Crabb Robinson. "She 
comes to Paris this evening and stays here a 
week. Her only male friend is a Mr. Payne, 
whom she praises exceedingly for his kindness 
and attentions to Charles. He is the author of 
Brutus y and has a good face." 



296 MARY LAMB. 

It was in the following year that most of the 
letters to Mr. Payne, published in the Century^ 
were written. They disclose Mary and her 
brother zealous to repay one good turn with 
another by watching the success of his dramatic 
efforts and endeavoring to negotiate favorably 
for him with actors and managers : ^^ AH Pacha 
will do. I sent my sister the first night, not 
having been able to go myself, and her report 
of its effect was most favorable. . . . My 
love to my little wife at Versailles, and to her 
dear mother. ... I have no mornings (my 
day begins at 5 p. m.) to transact business in, 
or talents for it, so I employ Mary, who has 
seen Robertson, who says that the piece which 
is to be operafied was sent to you six weeks 
since, etc., etc. Mary says you must write more 
showable letters about these matters, for with 
all our trouble of crossing out this word, and 
giving a cleaner turn to th' other, and folding 
down at this part, and squeezing an obnoxious 
epithet into a corner, she can hardly communi- 
cate their contents without offense. What, 
man, put less gall in your ink, or write me a 
biting tragedy ! " . . . 

The piece which was sent to Mr. Payne in 
Paris to be *' operafied " was probably Clari, the 
Maid of Milan. Bishop wrote or adapted the 
music : it still keeps possession of the stage, 



JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. 297 

and contains "Home, Sweet Home," which 
plaintive, well-worn ditty earned for itsw riter 
among his friends the title of the " Homeless 
Poet of Home." He ended his days as Ameri- 
can Consul at Tunis. 

This year's holiday (1823), spent at Hastings, 
was one of unalloyed pleasure and refreshment. 
"I have given up my soul to walking," Lamb 
writes. "There are spots, inland bays, etc., 
which realize the notions of Juan Fernandez. 
The best thing I lit upon, by accident, was a 
small country church (by whom or when built 
unknown), standing bare and single in the midst 
of a grove, with no house or appearance of habi- 
tation within a quarter of a mile, only passages 
diverging from it through beautiful woods to so 
many farm-houses. There it stands, like the 
first idea of a church, before parishioners were 
thought of, nothing but birds for its congrega- 
tion ; or like a hermit's oratory (the hermit 
dead), or a mausoleum ; its effect singularly 
impressive, like a church found in a desert isle 
to startle Crusoe with a home image. . . . 
I am a long time reconciling to town after one 
of these excursions. Home is become strange, 
and will remain so yet awhile ; home is the 
most unforgiving of friends, and always resents 
absence ; I know its cordial looks will return, 
but they are slow in clearing up." 



298 MARY LAMB. 

The " cordial looks," however, of the Russell 
street home never did return. The plan of the 
double lodgings, there and at Dalston, was a 
device of double discomforts ; the more so as 
"at my town lodgings," he afterwards confesses 
to Bernard Barton, "the mistress was always 
quarreling with our maid ; and at my place of 
rustication the whole family v/ere always beating 
one another, brothers beating sisters (one, a 
most beautiful girl, lamed for life), father beat- 
ing sons and daughters, and son again beating 
his father, knocking him fairly down, — a scene 
I never before witnessed, but was called out of 
bed by the unnatural blows, the parricidal color 
of which, though my morals could not but con- 
demn, yet my reason did heartily approve ; and 
in the issue the house was quieter for a day or 
so than I had ever known." It was time, 
indeed, for brother and sister to have a house 
of their own over their heads, means now amply 
sufficing. 

A few weeks after their return Lamb took 
Colebrook Cottage at Islington. It was 
detached, faced the New River, had six good 
rooms, and a spacious garden behind. "You 
enter without passage," he writes, "into a 
cheerful dining-room, all studded over and 
rough with old books, and above is a lightsome 
drawing-room, full of choice prints. I feel like 



COLEBROOK COTTAGE, 299 

a great lord, never having had a house before." 
A new acquaintance, a man much after 
Lamb's heart, at whose table he and Mary 
were, in the closing years of his life, more fre- 
quent guests than at any other — **Mr. Carey, 
the Dante man," — was added to their list this 
year. / " He is a model of a country parson, — 
lean (as a curate ought to be), modest, sensible, 
no obtruder of church dogmas, quite a different 
man from Southey," says Lamb of him. "Quite 
a different man from Southey " had a peculiar 
sting in it at this moment, for Southey had just 
struck a blow at "Elia" in the Quarterly, as 
unjust in purport as it was odious in manner — 
detraction in the guise of praise. Lamb 
answered him this very autumn in the London 
Magazine ; a noble answer it is, which seems 
to have awakened something like compunction 
in Southey's exemplary but pharisaic soul. At 
all events he made overtures for a reconcilia- 
tion, which so touched Lamb's generous heart, 
he was instantly ready to take blame upon him- 
self for having written the letter. " I shall be 
ashamed to see you, and my sister, though inno- 
cent, still more so," he says, "for the folly was 
done without her knowledge, and has made her 
uneasy ever since. My guardian angel was 
absent at that time." By which token we 
know that Mary did not escape the usual sad 



300 MARY LAMB. 

effects of change and fatigue in the removal to 
Colebrook Cottage. 

Means were easy, home comfortable now; 
but many a wistful, backward glance did brother 
and sister cast to the days of early struggle, 
with their fuller life, keener pleasures and bet- 
ter health. It was not long after they were 
settled in Colebrook Cottage that they opened 
their hearts on this theme in that beautiful 
essay by "Elia" called Old China^ Words- 
worth's favorite, in which Charles for once 
made himself Mary's — or, as he calls her, 
Cousin Bridget's — mouthpiece. Whilst sip- 
ping tea out of "a set of extraordinary blue 
china, a recent purchase," . . . writes "Elia," 
" I could not help remarking how favorable cir- 
cumstances had been to us of late years, that 
we could afford to please the eye sometimes 
with trifles of this sort ; when a passing senti- 
ment seemed to overshade the brow of my com- 
panion. I am quick at detecting these summer 
clouds in Bridget. 

" ' I wish the good old times would come 
again,' she said, 'when we were not quite so 
rich. I do not mean that I want to be poor ; 
but there was a middle state,' so she was pleased 
to ramble on, 'in which I am sure we were a 
great deal happier. A purchase is but a pur- 
chase, now that you have money enough and to 



BRIDGE TS RE TROSPECT. 30 1 

spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. 
When we coveted a cheap luxury (and oh, how- 
much ado I had to get you to consent in those 
times !) we were used to have a debate two or 
three days before, and to weigh the for and 
against, and think what we might spare it out 
of, and what saving we could hit upon that 
should be an equivalent. A thing was worth 
buying then, when we felt the money that we 
paid for it. 

"'Do you remember the brown suit which 
you made to hang upon you till all your friends 
cried *' Shame upon you ! " it grew so thread- 
bare, and all because of that folio Beaumont and 
Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night 
from Barker's in Covent Garden } Do you 
remember how we eyed it for weeks before we 
could make up our minds to the purchase, and 
had not come to a determination till it was near 
ten o'clock of the Saturday night when you set 
off from Islington, fearing you should be too 
late, and when the old bookseller with some 
grumbling opened his shop, and by the twink- 
ling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted 
out the relic from his dusty treasures, and when 
you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as 
cumbersome, and when you presented it to me, 
and when we were exploring the perfectness of 
it {collating, you called it), and while I was 



302 MARY LAMB. 

repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, 
which your impatience would not suffer to be 
left till daybreak, — was there no pleasure in 
being a poor man ? Or can those neat black 
clothes which you wear now, and are so careful 
to keep brushed since we have become rich and 
finical, give you half the honest vanity with 
which you flaunted it about in that over-worn 
suit, your old corbeau, for four or five weeks 
longer than you should have done, to pacify 
your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen, 
or sixteen shillings, was it? — a great affair we 
thought it then — which you had lavished on 
the old folio ? Now you can afford to buy any 
book that pleases you ; but I do not see that 
you ever bring me home any nice old purchases 
now. 

"'When you came home with twenty apolo- 
gies for laying out a less number of shillings 
upon that print after Lionardo which we chris- 
tened the ''Lady Blanch," when you looked at 
the purchase and thought of the money, and 
thought of the money and looked again at the 
picture, — was there no pleasure in being a poor 
man ? Now you have nothing to do but to walk 
into Colnaghi's and buy a wilderness of Lionar- 
dos. Yet, do you ? 

'"Then do you remember our pleasant walks 
to Enfield and Potter's Bar and Waltham when 



BRIDGET'S RETROSPECT. 303 

we liad a holiday — holidays and all other fun 
are gone now we are rich — and the little hand- 
basket in which I used to deposit our day's fare 
of savory cold lamb and salad, and how you 
would pry about at noon-tide for some decent 
house where we might go in and produce our 
store, only paying for the ale that you must call 
for, and speculated upon the looks of the land- 
lady, and whether she was likely to allow us a 
table-cloth, and wish for such another honest 
hostess as Izaak Walton has described many a 
one on the pleasant banks of the Lea when he 
went a-fishing ? And sometimes they would 
prove obliging enough, and sometimes they 
would look grudgingly upon us ; but we had 
cheerful looks still for one another, and would 
eat our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging 
Piscator his Trout Hall. Now when we go out 
a day's pleasuring, which is seldom, moreover, 
we ride part of the way, and go into a fine inn 
and order the best of dinners, never debating 
the expense, which after all never has half the 
relish of those chance country snaps, when we 
were at the mercy of uncertain usage and a 
precarious welcome. 

" ' You are too proud to see a play anywhere 
now but in the pit. Do you remember where 
it was we used to sit when we saw the " Battle 
of Hexham," and the *' Surrender of Calais," 



304 MARY LAMB. 

and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the " Children 
in the Wood," — when we squeezed out our 
shillings apiece to sit three or four times in a 
season in the one-shilling gallery, where you 
felt all the time that you ought not to have 
brought me, and more strongly I felt obliga- 
tion to you for having brought me — and the 
pleasure was the better for a little shame? 
And when the curtain drew up what cared we 
for our place in the house, or what mattered it 
where we were sitting, when our thoughts were 
with Rosalind in Arden or with Viola at the 
Court of Illyria ? You used to say that the gal- 
lery was the best place of all for enjoying a 
play socially ; that the relish of such exhibitions 
must be in proportion to the infrequency of 
going ; that the company we met there, not 
being in general readers of plays, were obliged 
to attend the more, and did attend, to what was 
going on on the stage, because a word lost 
would have been a chasm which it was impossi- 
ble for them to fill up. With such reflections 
we consoled our pride then ; and I appeal to you 
whether as a woman I met generally with less 
attention and accommodation than I have done 
since in more expensive situations in the house. 
The getting in, indeed, and the crowding up 
those inconvenient staircases, w^as bad enough, 
but there was still a law of civility to woman, 



BRIDGET'S RETROSPECT. 305.. 

recognized to quite as great an extent as we 
ever found in the other passages. And how a 
little difficulty overcome heightened the snug 
seat and the play afterwards ! Now we can 
only pay our money and walk in. You cannot 
see, you say, in the galleries now. I am sure 
we saw, and heard too, well enough then, but 
sight and all, I think, is gone with our poverty. 
" ' There was pleasure in eating strawberries 
before they became quite common — in the first 
dish of peas while they were yet dear ; to have 
them for a nice supper, a treat. What treat can 
we have now } If we were to treat ourselves 
now — that is, to have dainties a little above our 
means — it would be selfish and wicked. It is 
the very little more that we allow ourselves 
beyond what the actual poor can get at, that 
makes what I call a treat — when two people, 
living together as we have done, now and then 
indulge themselves in a cheap luxury which 
both like, while each apologizes and is willing to 
take both halves of the blame to his single share. 
I see no harm in people making much of them- 
selves in that sense of the word. It may give 
them a hint how to make much of others. But 
now — what I mean by the word — we never do 
make much of ourselves. None but the poor 
can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, 
but persons, as we were, just above poverty. 



306 MARY LAMB. 

" ' I know what you were going to say — that 
it is mighty pleasant at the end of the year to 
make all meet, and much ado we used to have 
every thirty-first night of December to account 
for our exceedings ; many a long face did you 
make over your puzzled accounts, and in con- 
triving to make it out how we had spent so 
much, or that we had not spent so much, or that 
it was impossible we should spend so much next 
year — and still we found our slender capital 
decreasing; but then, betwixt ways and pro- 
jects and compromises of one sort or another, 
and talk of curtailing this charge and doing 
without that for the future, and the hope that 
youth brings and laughing spirits (in which you 
were never poor till now), we pocketed up our 
loss, and in conclusion, with "lusty brimmers" 
(as you used to quote it out of hearty, cheerful 
Mr. Cotton, as you called him), we used to "wel- 
come in the coming guest." Now we have no 
reckonings at all at the end of the old year-^- 
ho flattering promises about the new year doing 
'better for us.' 

" Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most 
occasions, that when she gets into a rhetorical 
vein I am careful how I interrupt it. I could 
not help, however, smiling at the phantom of 
wealth which her dear imagination had con- 
jured up out of a clear income of poor — hun- 



ELIA'S REPLY. 307 

dred pounds a year. It is true we were happier 
when we were poorer, but we were also younger, 
my cousin. I am afraid we must put up with 
the excess, for if we were to shake the superflux 
into the sea, we should not much mend ourselves. 
That we had much to struggle with as we grew 
up together, we have reason to be most thank- 
ful. It strengthened and knit our compact 
closer. We could never have been what we 
have been to each other, if we had always had 
the sufficiency which you now complain of. 
The resisting power, those natural dilations of 
the youthful spirit, which circumstances cannot 
straighten, with us are long since passed away. 
Competence to age is supplementary youth ; a 
sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best 
that is to be had. We must ride where we for- 
merly walked ; live better and lie softer — and 
we shall be wise to do so — than we had means 
to do in those good old days you speak of. Yet 
could those days return, could you and I once 
more walk our thirty miles a day, could Bannis- 
ter and Mrs. Bland again be young, and you 
and I be young again to see them, — could the 
good old one-shilling gallery days return — they 
are dreams, my cousin, now, — but could you 
and I at this moment, instead of this quiet 
argument, by our well-carpeted fire-side, sitting 
on this luxurious sofa, be once more struggling 



308 MARY LAMB. 

up those inconvenient staircases, pushed about 
and squeezed and elbowed by the poorest rabble 
of poor gallery scramblers, — could I once more 
hear those anxious shrieks of yours, and the 
delicious * Thank God we are safe,' which always 
followed when the topmost stair conquered let 
in the first light of the whole cheerful theater 
down beneath us, — I know not the fathom-line 
that ever touched a descent so deep as I would 
be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus 
had, or the great Jew R. is supposed to have, 
to purchase it." 

These fire-side confidences between brother 
and sister bring back, in all the warmth and 
fullness of life, that past mid which the biog- 
rapher has been groping and listening to 
echoes. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Lamb's ill Health.-— Retirement from the India House, 
and subsequent Illness. — Letter from Mary to Lady 
Stoddart. — Colebrook Cottage left. — Mary's con- 
stant Attacks. — Home given up. — Board with the 
Westwoods. — Death of Hazlitt. — Removal to Ed- 
monton. — Marriage of Emma Isola. — Mary's sud- 
den Recovery. — 111 again. — Death of Coleridge. — 
Death of Charles. — Mary's last Days and Death. 

1 824-47. — ^t. 60-83. 

The year 1824 was one of the best Mary 
ever enjoyed. Alas! it was not the precursor 
of others like it, but rather a farewell gleam 
before the clouds gathered up thicker and 
thicker, till the light of reason was perma- 
nently obscured. In November Charles wrote 
to Miss Hutchinson: " We had promised our 
dear friends the Monkhouses " [relatives of Mrs. 
Wordsworth] — "promised ourselves, rather — 
a visit to them at Ramsgate ; but I thought it 
best, and Mary seemed to have it at heart too, 
not to go far from home these last holidays. It 
is connected with a sense of unsettlement, and 
secretly I know she hoped that such abstinence 



3IO MARY LAMB. 

would be friendly to her health. She certainly 
has escaped her sad yearly visitation, whether 
in consequence of it, or of faith in it, and we 
have to be thankful for a good 1824. To get 
such a notion in our heads may go a great way 
another year. Not that we quite confined our- 
selves ; but, assuming Islington to be head- 
quarters, we made timid flights to Ware, 
Watford, etc., to try how trout s tasted, for a 
night out or so, not long enough to make the 
sense of change oppressive, but sufficient to 
scour the rust of home." 

With Lamb it was quite otherwise. The 
letters of this year show that health and spirits 
were flagging sorely. He had, ever since 1820, 
been working at high pressure, producing, in 
steady, rapid succession, his matchless essays 
in the London Magazine, and this at the end 
of a long day's office-work. His delicate, 
nervous organization could not fail to suffer 
from the continued strain, not to mention the 
ever-present and more terrible one of his 
sister's health. 

At last his looks attracted the notice of one 
of his chiefs, and it was intimated that a 
resignation might be accepted, as it was after 
some anxious delays ; and a provision for Mary, 
if she survived, was guaranteed in addition to 
his comfortable pension. The sense of free- 



MARY TO LADY STODDART. 311 

dom was almost overwhelming. " Mary wakes 
every morning with an obscure feeling that some 
good has happened to us," he writes. "■ Leigh 
Hunt and Montgomery, after their release- 
ments, describe the shock of their emancipation 
much as I feel mine. But it hurt their frames. 
I eat, drink, and sleep as sound as ever." 

A reaction did come, however. Lamb con- 
tinued pretty well through the spring, but in 
the summer he was prostrated by a severe 
attack of nervous fever. In July he wrote to 
Bernard Barton: ''My nervous attack has so 
unfitted me that I have not courasre to sit down 
to a letter. My poor pittance in the London^ 
you will see, is drawn from my sickness." \The 
Convalescent, which appeared July, 1825.] 

One more glimpse of Mary in a letter from 

her own hand. Again the whole summer was 

being spent in lodgings at Enfield, whence Mary 

wrote to congratulate her old friend Mrs. (now 

Lady) Stoddart, her husband having become 

Chief Justice of Malta, on the marriage of a 

daughter: — 

"August 9, 1827. 

"My dear lady friend: — My brother 
called at our empty cottage [Colebrook] yester- 
day and found the cards of your son and his 
friend, Mr. Hine, under the door, which has 
brought to my mind that I am in danger of los- 



312 MARY LAMB. 

ing this post, as I did the last, being at that 
time in a confused state of mind, — for at that 
time we were talking of leaving, and persuading 
ourselves that we were intending to leave town 
and all our friends, and sit down forever, solitary 
and forgotten here. . . . Here we are, and 
we have locked up our house and left it to take 
care of itself ; but at present we do not design 
to extend our rural life beyond Michaelmas. 
Your kind letter was most welcome to me, 
though the good news contained in it was 
already known to me. Accept my warmest 
congratulations, though they come a little of 
the latest. In my next I may probably have to 
hail you grandmamma, or to felicitate you on 
the nuptials of pretty Mary, who, whatever the 
beaux of Malta may think of her, I can only 
remember her round, shining face, and her *0 
William ! dear William ! ' when we visited her 
the other day at school. Present my love and 
best wishes, a long and happy married life, to 
dear Isabella — I love to call her Isabella; but 
in truth, having left your other letter in town, 
I recollect no other name she has. The same 
love and the same wishes, in futitro, to my 
friend Mary, Tell her that her 'dear William' 
grows taller, and improves in manly looks and 
man-like behaviour every time I see him. 
What is Henry about } and what should one 



MA/^V TO LADY S TODD ART, ^12> 

wish for him ? If he be in search of a wife, I 
will send him out Emma Isola. 

" You remember Emma, that you were so 
kind as to invite to your ball ? She is now with 
us, and I am moving Heaven and earth, that is 
to say, I am pressing the matter upon all the 
very few friends I have that are likely to assist 
me in such a case, to get her into a family as 
governess; and Charles and I do little else 
here than teach her something or other all day 
long. 

" We are striving to put enough Latin into 
her to enable her to begin to teach it to young 
learners. So much for Emma, for you are so 
fearfully far away that I fear it is useless to 
implore your patronage for her. . . . 

" I expect a pacquet of manuscript from you. 
You promised me the office of negotiating with 
booksellers and so forth for your next work." 
[Lady Stoddart published several tales under 
the name of Blackford.] ''Is it in good for- 
wardness "i Or do you grow rich and indolent 
now.? It is not surprising that your Maltese 
story should find its way into Malta ; but I was 
highly pleased with the idea of your pleasant 
surprise at the sight of it. I took a large sheet 
of paper, in order to leave Charles room to add 
something more worth reading than my poor 
mite. May we all meet again once more." 



314 MARY LAMB. 

It was to escape the "dear weariness" of 
incessant friendly visitors, which they were now 
less than ever able to bear, that they had taken 
refuge in the Enfield lodging. 

'* We have been here near three months, and 
shall stay two more if people will let us alone; 
but they persecute us from village to village," 
Lamb writes to Bernard Barton in August. 

At the end of that time they decided to 
return to Colebrook Cottage no more, but to 
take a house at Enfield. The actual process of 
taking it was witnessed by a spectator, a per- 
fect stranger at the time, on whose memory it 
left a lively picture : '' Leaning idly out of a 
window, I saw a group of three issuing from 
the ' gambogy-looking ' cottage close at hand, ■ — 
a slim, middle-aged man, in quaint, uncontem- 
porary habiliments, a rather shapeless bundle 
of an old lady, in a bonnet like a mob-cap, and 
a young girl ; while before them bounded a 
riotous dog (Hood's immortal 'Dash'), holding 
a board with * This House to Let ' on it in his 
jaws. Lamb was on his way back to the house- 
agent, and that was his fashion of announcing 
that he had taken the premises. 

'^ I soon grew to be on intimate terms with 
my neighbors," continues the writer of this 
pleasant reminiscence — Mr. Westwood, in 
Notes and Queries, volume. lo- — *'who let me 



ENFIELD, 315 

loose in his library. , . . My heart yearns 
even now to those old books. Their faces 
seem all familiar to me, even their patches and 
blotches — the work of a wizened old cobbler 
hard by ; for little wotted Lamb of Roger 
Parkes and Charles Lewises. A cobbler was 
his bookbinder, and the rougher the restora- 
tion the better. . . . When any notable 
visitors made their appearance at the cottage, 
Mary Lamb's benevolent tap at my window- 
pane seldom failed to summon me out, and I 
was presently ensconced in a quiet corner of 
their sitting-room, half hid in some great man's 
shadow. 

" Of the discourse of these dii majores I have 
no recollection now ; but the faces of some of 
them I can still partially recall. Hazlitt's face, 
for instance, keen and aggressive, with eyes 
that flashed out epigram ; Tom Hood's, a Meth- 
odist parson's face, not a ripple breaking the 
lines of it, though every word he dropped was 
a pun, and every pun roused roars of laughter; 
Leigh Hunt's, parcel genial, parcel democra'tic, 
with as much rabid politics on his lips as honey 
from Mount Hybla ; Miss Kelly [the little Bar- 
bara S. of * Elia '], plain but engaging, the 
most unprofessional of actresses and unspoiled 
of women ; the bloom of the child on her cheek 
undefaced by the rouge, to speak in metaphors. 



3l6 . MARY LAMB. 

She was one of the most dearly welcome of 
Lamb's guests. Wordsworth's, farmerish and 
respectable, but with something of the great 
poet occasionally breaking out, and glorifying 
forehead and eyes." ... 

Mary did not escape her usual seizure. 
*'You will understand my silence," writes 
Lamb to his Quaker friend,' ''when I tell you 
that my sister, on the very eve of entering into 
a new house we have taken at Enfield, was 
surprised with an attack of one of her sad, long 
illnesses, which deprive me of her society, 
though not of her domestication, for eight or 
nine weeks together. I see her, but it does 
her no good. But for this, we have the snug- 
gest, most comfortable house, with everything 
most compact and desirable. Colebrook is a 
wilderness. The books, prints, etc., are come 
here, and the New River came down with us. 
The familiar prints, the busts, the Milton, seem 
scarce to have changed their rooms. One of 
her last observations was, ' How frightfully like 
this is to our room at Islington,' — our up-stair 
room she meant. We have tried quiet here for 
four months, and I will answer for the comfort 
of it enduring." And again, later: "I have 
scarce spirits to write. Nine weeks are com- 
pleted, and Mary does not get any better. It 
is perfectly exhausting. Enfield and everything 



LONELINESS. 317 

is very gloomy. But for long experience, I 
should fear her ever getting well." 

She did get ''pretty well and comfortable 
again " before the year was quite out, but it 
did not last long. Times grew sadder and 
sadder for the faithful brother. There are two 
long, oft-quoted letters to Bernard Barton, 
written in July, 1829, which who has ever read 
without a pang } 

*'My sister is again taken ill," he says, "and 
I am obliged to remove her out of the house 
for many weeks, I fear, before I can hope to have 
her again. I have been very desolate indeed. 
My loneliness is a little abated by our young 
friend Emma having just come here for her 
holidays, and a schoolfellow of hers that was 
with her. Still, the house is not the same, 
though she is the same. Mary had been 
pleasing herself with the prospect of see- 
ing her at this time ; and with all their 
company, the house feels at times a fright- 
ful solitude. . . . But town, with all my 
native hankering after it, is not what it was. 
I was frightfully convinced of this as 
I passed houses and places — empty caskets 
now. I have ceased to care almost about any- 
body. The bodies I cared for are in graves or 
dispersed. . . . Less than a month I hope 
will bring home Mary. She is at Fulham, 



3l8 MARY LAMB. 

looking better in her health than ever, but 
sadly rambling, and scarce showing any pleas- 
ure in seeing me, or curiosity when I should 
come again. But the old feelings will come 
back again, and we shall drown old sorrows 
over a game of piquet again. But 'tis a tedious* 
cut out of a life of fifty-four to lose twelve or 
thirteen weeks every year or two. And to 
make me more alone, our ill-tempered maid is 
gone [Becky], who, with all her airs, was yet a 
home-piece of furniture, a record of better 
days. The young thing that has succeeded her 
is good and attentive, but she is nothing ; and 
I have no one here to talk over old matters 
with. Scolding and quarreling have something 
of familiarity and a community of interest ; 
they imply acquaintance ; they are of resent- 
ment which is of the family of dearness. 
Well, I shall write merrier anon. 'Tis the 
present copy of my countenance I send, and to 
complain is a little to alleviate. May you 
enjoy yourself as far as the wicked world will 
let you, and think that you are not quite alone, 
as I am." 

To the friends who came to see him he made 
no complaints, nor showed a sad countenance ; 
but it was hard that he might not relieve his 
drear solitude by the sights and sounds of 
beloved London. " O never let the lying poets 



HOME GIVEN UP. 319 

be believed," he writes to Wordsworth, "who 
'tice men from the cheerful haunts of streets ; 
or think they mean it not of a country village. 
In the ruins of Palmyra I could gird myself up 
to solitude, or muse to the snorings of the 
Seven Sleepers ;' but to have a little teazing 
image of a town about one ; eountry folks that 
do not look like country folks ; shops two yards 
square ; half a dozen apples and two penn'orth 
of over-looked gingerbread for the lofty fruit- 
erers of Oxford street ; and for the immortal 
book and print stalls, a circulating library that 
stands still, where the show-picture is a last 
year's valentine. . . . The very blackguards 
here are degenerate ; the topping gentry, stock- 
brokers ; the passengers too many to insure 
your quiet or let you go about whistling or 
gaping, too few to be the fine, indifferent 
pageants of Fleet street. ... A garden 
was the primitive prison till man, with Prome- 
thean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned 
himself out of it. Thence followed Babylon, 
Nineveh, Venice, London, haberdashers, gold- 
smiths, taverns, satires, epigrams, puns, — these 
all came in on the town part and the thither 
side of innocence." . . . In the same letter 
he announces that they have been obliged to 
give up home altogether, and have ** taken a 
farewell of the pompous, troublesome trifle 



320 



MARY LAMB. 



called housekeeping, and settled down into 
poor boarders and lodgers at next door with an 
old couple, the Baucis and Baucida of dull 
Enfield. Here we have nothing to do with our 
■ victuals but to eat. them, with the garden but 
to see it grow, with the tax-gatherer but to 
hear him knock, with the maid but to hear her 
scolded. Scot and lot, butcher, baker, are 
things unknown to us save as spectators of the 
pageant. We are fed, we know not how ; 
quietists, confiding ravens. . . . Mary- 
must squeeze out a line propria manu, but 
indeed her fingers have been incorrigibly ner- 
vous to letter-writing for a long interval. 
'Twill please you all to hear that, though I fret 
like a lion in a net, her present health and 
spirits are better than they have been for some 
time past. She is absolutely three years and 
a half younger since we adopted this boarding 
plan! . . . Under this roof I ought now 
to take my rest, but that back-looking ambition, 
more delightful, tells me I might yet be a 
Londoner ! Well, if ever we do move, we have 
encumbrances the less to impede us ; all our 
furniture has faded under the auctioneer's 
hammer, going for nothing, like the tarnished 
frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a 
spoon or two left to bless us. Clothed we came 
into Enfield, and naked we must go out of it. 
I would live in London shirtless, bookless." 



DEATH OF HAZLITT. 32 1 

Now that Mary was recovered they did ven- 
ture to try once more the experiment of London 
lodgings at 24 Southampton Buildings, Holborn, 
where Hazlitt had often stayed. But the result 
was worse even than could have been antici- 
pated. May 12, 1830, Lamb writes: "I have 
brought my sister to Enfield, being sure she 
had no hope of recovery in London. Her state 
of mind is deplorable beyond any example. I 
almost fear whether she has strength, at her 
tim.e of life, ever to get out of it. Here she 
must be nursed and neither see nor hear of any- 
thing in the world out of her sick chamber. 
The mere hearing that Southey had called at 
our lodgings totally upset her. Pray see him 
or hear of him at Mr. Rickman's, and excuse 
my not writing to him. I dare not write or 
receive a letter in her presence." 

Another old friend, the one whom, next to 
Coleridge, Wordsworth and Manning, Lamb 
valued most, died this year. Hazlitt's strength 
had been for some time declining ; and during 
the summer of 1830 he lay at his lodgings, 6 
Frith street, Soho, languishing in what was to 
prove his death-illness, though he was but fifty- 
two; his mind clear and active 'as ever, looking 
back, as he said, upon his past life, which 
"seemed as if he had slept it out in a dream or 
shadow on the side of the hill of knowledge, 
II 



322 MARY LAMB. 

where he had fed on books, on thoughts, on 
pictures, and only heard in half murmurs the 
trampling of busy feet or the noises of the 
throng below." " I have had a happy life " were 
his last words. Unfortunate in love and mar- 
riage, perhaps scarcely capable of friendship, he 
found the warmth of life, the tie that bound 
him to humanity, in the fervor of his admiration 
for all that is great or beautiful or powerful in 
literature, in art, in heroic achievement. His 
ideas, as he said of himself, were " of so sinewy 
a character that they were in the nature of real- 
ities " to him. Lamb was by his death-bed 
that 1 8th of September. 

Godwin still lived, but there seems to have 
been little intercourse between the old friends. 
Manning was often away travelling on the Con- 
tinent. Martin Burney maintained his place 
"on the top scale of the Lambs' friendship lad- 
der, on which an angel or two were still climb- 
ing, and some, alas ! descending," and oftenest 
enlivening the solitude of Enfield. He "is as 
good and as odd as ever," writes Charles to 
Mrs. Hazlitt. "We had a dispute about the 
word 'heir,' which I contended was pronounced 
like * air.' He said that might be in common 
parlance, or that we might so use it speaking of 
the ' Heir-at-Law,' a comedy, but that in the law. 
courts it was necessary to give it a full aspira- 



MARTIN BURNEY. 323 

tionand to say hayer; he thought it might even 
vitiate a cause if a counsel pronounced it other- 
wise. In conclusion he ^ would consult Sergeant 
Wilde' — who gave it against him. Sometimes 
he falleth into the water ; sometimes into the 
fire. He came down here and insisted on read- 
ing Virgil's Eneid all through with me (which 
he did), because a counsel must know Latin. 
Another time he read out all the Gospel of St. 
John, because Biblical quotations are very 
emphatic in a court of justice. A third time 
he would carve a fowl, which he did very ill- 
favoredly, because * we did not know how indis- 
pensable it was for a barrister to do all those 
things well. Those little things were of more 
consequence than we supposed.' So he goes 
on, harassing about the way to prosperity, and 
losing it ; with a long head, but somewhat a 
wrong one — harum-scarum. Why does not his 
guardian angel look to him .'' He deserves one; 
may be he has tired him out." 

A cheerful glimpse of the brother and sister 
occurs now and then in the diary of their old 
friend, Crabb Robinson, in these days when the 
dark times were so long and the bright intervals 
so short and far between. March, 1832, he 
writes : " I walked to Enfield and found the 
Lambs in excellent state — not in high health, 
but, what is far better, quiet and cheerful. I 



324 MARY LAMB, 

had a very pleasant evening at whist. Lamb 
was very chatty and altogether as I could wish." 
And again in July : . . ^' reached Lamb at the 
lucky moment before tea. After tea Lamb and 
I took a pleasant walk together. He was in 
excellent health and tolerable spirits, and was 
to-night quite eloquent in praise of Miss Isola. 
He says she is the most sensible girl and the 
best female talker he knows ; ... he is 
teaching her Italian without knowing the lan- 
guage himself." Two months later the same 
friend took Walter Savage Landor to pay them 
a visit. " We had scarcely an hour to chat with 
them, but it was enough to make Landor 
express himself delighted with the person of 
Mary Lamb and pleased with the conversation 
of Charles Lamb, though I thought him by no 
means at his ease, and Miss Lamb was quite 
silent." 

Scarcely ever did Charles leave home for 
many hours together when Mary was there to 
brighten it ; not even for the temptation of see- 
ing the Wordsworths or Coleridge. " I want 
to see the Wordsworths," he writes, " but I do 
not much like to be all night away. It is dull 
enough to be here together, but it is duller to 
leave Mary ; in short, it is painful ; " and to 
Coleridge, who had been hurt by the long inter- 
val since he had seen them, Lamb writes : 



LAMB TO WORDSWORTH. 325 

" Not an unkind thought has passed in my brain 
about you ; but I have been wof ully neglectful 
of you. . . . old loves to and hope of kind 
looks from the Gillmans when I come. If ever 
you thought an offense, much more wrote it 
against me, it must have been in the times of 
Noah, ' and the great waters swept it away. 
Mary's most kind love, and may be a wrong 
prophet of your bodings ! Here she is crying 
for mere love over your letter. I wring out 
less but not sincerer showers," 

The spring of 1833 brought to Charles and 
Mary only the return of dark days. Lamb 
writes to Wordsworth : — 

"Your letter, save in what respects your dear 
sister's health, cheered me in my new solitude. 
Mary is ill again. Her illnesses encroach 
yearly. The last was three months, followed 
by two of depression most dreadful. I look 
back upon her earlier attacks with longing: 
nice little durations of six weeks or so, followed 
by complete restoration, shocking as they were 
then to me. In short, half her life she is dead 
to me, and the other half is made anxious v/ith 
fears and lookings forward to the next shock. 
With such prospects it seemed to me necessary 
that she should no longer live with me and be 
fluttered with continual removals ; so I am come 
to live with her at a Mr. Walden's and his wife 



326 MARY LAMB. 

[at Edmonton], who take in patients, and have 
arranged to lodge and board us only. They 
have had the care of her before. I see little of 
her ; alas ! I too often hear her. Stmt lachrymcB 
rerum ! and you and I must bear it. 

"To lay a little more load on it, a circum- 
stance has happened {ciij us pars magna fui)^ and 
which at another crisis I should have more 
rejoiced in. I am about to lose my old and only 
walk companion, whose mirthful spirits were 
the ' youth of our house ' — Emma Isola. I 
have her here now for a little while, but she is 
too nervous properly to be under such a roof, 
so she will make short visits — be no more an 
inmate. With my perfect approval and more 
than concurrence, she is to be wedded to Moxon 
at the end of August. So 'perish the roses and 
the flowers ! ' — how ^.s it } 

"Now to the brighter side. I am emanci- 
pated from the Westwoods, and I am with atten- 
tive people and younger. I am three or four 
miles nearer the great city ; coaches half price 
less and going always, of which I will avail 
myself. I have few friends left there — one or 
two, though, most beloved. But London streets 
and faces cheer me inexpressibly, though not 
one known of the latter were remaining. . . . 
I am feeble but cheerful in this my genial hot 
weather. Walked sixteen miles yesterday. I 
can't read much in summer-time." 



LAST LETTERS, 12'J, 

There was no sense of being '' pulled up by 
the roots " now in these removals. Lamb had 
and could have no home, since she who had been 
its chief pride was in perpetual banishment 
from him and from herself. The following 
notelet which Talfourd, in his abundance, prob- 
ably did not think worth publishing, at any rate 
shows, with mournful significance, how bitter 
were his recollections of Enfield, to which they 
had gone full of hope. It was written to Mr. 
Gillman's eldest son, a young clergyman, desir- 
ous of the incumbency of Enfield : — 

'^By a strange occurrence we have quitted 
Enfield forever ! Oh ! the happy eternity ! 
Who is vicar or lecturer for that detestable 
place concerns us not. But Asbury, surgeon 
and a good fellow, has offered to get you a 
mover and seconder, and you may use my name 
freely to him. Except him and Dr. Creswell, I 
have no respectable acquaintance in the dreary 
village. At least my friends are all in the pub- 
lic line, and it might not suit to have it moved 
at a special vestry by John Gage at the Crown 
and Horseshoe, licensed victualler, and seconded 
by Joseph Horner of the Green Dragon, ditto, 
that the Rev. J. G. is a fit person to be lect- 
urer, etc. 

" My dear James, I wish you all success, but 
am too full of my own emancipation almost to 
congratulate any one else." 



328 'mARY lamb. 

Miss Isola's wedding-day came, and still 
Mary's mind was under eclipse; but the 
announcement of the actual event restored her 
as by magic ; and here is her own letter of con- 
gratulation to the bride and bridegroom ^ — the 
last from her hand : — 

"My dear Emma and Edward Moxon: — 

'* Accept my sincere congratulations, and 
imagine more good wishes than my weak nerves 
will let me put into good, set words. The 
dreary blank of tmajiswered questions which I 
ventured to ask in vain was cleared up on the 
wedding-day by Mrs. W. taking a glass of wine, 
and, with a total change of countenance, beg- 
ging leave to drink Mr. and Mrs. Moxon's 
health. It restored me from that moment, as 
if by an electric shock, to the entire possession 
of my senses. I never felt so calm and quiet 
after a similar illness as I do now. I feel as if 
all tears were wiped from my eyes and all care 
from my heart." 

To which beautiful last words Charles adds : — 

"Dears again: — Your letter interrupted a 
seventeenth game at piquet which we were hav- 
ing after walking to Wright's and purchasing 
shoes. We pass our time in cards, walks and 
reading. We attack Tasso soon. Never was 



LAST LETTERS. 329 

such a calm or such a recovery. 'Tis her own 
words undictated." 

Not Tasso only was attacked, but even Dante. 
" You will be amused to hear," he tells Carey, 
''that my sister and I have, with the aid of 
Emma, scrambled through the Inferno by the 
blessed furtherance of your polar-star transla- 
tion. I think we scarce left anything unmade- 
out. But our partner has left us, and we have 
not yet resumed. Mary's chief pride in it was 
that she should some day brag of it to you." 

-The year 1834, the last of Lamb's life, opened 
gloomily. Early in February was written one 
of the saddest and sweetest of all his utterances 
concerning Mary. With the exception of a 
brief, mournful allusion to her in his latest let- 
ter to Wordsworth, these were his last written 
words about her, and they breathe the same 
tenderness and unswerving devotion at the close 
of his life-long struggle and endurance for her 
sake as those he wrote when it began. The 
letter is to Miss Fryer, an old schoolfellow of 
Emma Isola : ''Your letter found me just 
returned from keeping my birthday (pretty 
innocent !) at Dover street [the Moxons]. I see 
them pretty often. In one word, be less uneasy 
about me ; I bear my privations very well ; I 
am not in the depths of desolation, as hereto- 
fore. Your admonitions are not lost upon me. 



330 MA7?V LAMB, 

Vour kindness has sunk into my heart. Have 

faith in me. It is no new thing for me to be 

left to my sister. When she is not violent her 

rambling chat is better to me than the sense 

■and sanity of this world. Her heart is obscured, 

not buried ; it breaks out occasionally, and one 

can discern a strong mind struggling with the 

billows that have gone over it. I could be 

nowhere happier than under the same roof with 

her. Her memory is unnaturally strong ; and 

from ages past, if we may so call the earliest 

records of our poor life, she fetches thousands 

of names and things that never would have 

dawned upon me again, and thousands from 

the ten years she lived before me. What took 

place from early girlhood to her coming of age 

principally live again (every important thing 

and every trifle) in her brain, with the vividness 

of real presence. For twelve hours incessantly 

she will pour out, without intermission, all her 

past life, forgetting nothing, pouring out name 

after name to the Waldens, as a dream, sense 

and nonsense, truth and errors huddled together, 

a medley between inspiration and possession. 

What things we are ! I know you will bear 

with me talking of things. It seems to ease 

me, for I have nobody to tell these things to 

now. ... 

A week later was written that last little 



LAST LETTERS. 33 1 

letter to Wordsworth [the reader will recognize 
Louisa Martin — Monkey- — so prettily described 
in Lamb's first letter to Hazlitt] : "I write 
from a house of mourning. The oldest and 
best friends I have left are in trouble. A 
branch of them (and they of the best stock of 
God's creatures, I believe) is establishing a 
school at Carlisle. Her name is Louisa Martin. 
For thirty years she has been tried by me, and 
on her behavior I would stake my soul. Oh! 
if you could recommend her, how would I love 
you — if I could love you better ! Pray recom- 
mend her. She is as good a human creature — . 
next to my sister, perhaps, the most exemplary 
female I ever knew. Moxon tells me you would 
like a letter from me ; you shall have one. 
This I cannot mingle up with any nonsense 
which you usually tolerate from C. Lamb. 
Poor Mary is ill again, after a short, lucid inter- 
val of four or five months. In short, I may call 
her half dead to me. Good you are to me. 
Yours, with fervor of friendship, forever." 

The dearest friend of all, Coleridge, long in 
declining health — the "hooded eagle, flagging 
wearily" — was lying this spring and summer 
in his last painful illness ; heart-disease chiefly, 
but complicated with other sources of suffering, 
borne with heroic patience. Thoughts of his 
youth came to him, he said, "like breezes from 



332 MARY LAMB. 

the Spice Islands ; " and under the title of that 
poem written in the glorious Nether Stowey 
days when Charles was his guest — This Lime- 
tree Bower my Prisoii — he wrote a little while 
before he died : — 

Charles and Mary Lamb, 

Dear to my heart, yea, as it were my hearty 

S. T. C. J?X. 63, 1834. 

1797 

1834 

37 years ! 

He drew his last breath on the 25th of July. 
At first Lamb seemed wholly unable to grasp 
the fact that he was gone. '' Coleridge is 
dead ! " he murmured continually, as if to con- 
vince himself. He " grieved that he could not 
grieve." "But since," he wrote in that beauti- 
ful memorial of his friend, the last fragment 
shaped by his hand — " but since, I feel how 
great a part of me he was. His great and dear 
spirit haunts me. . . . He was my fift)^- 
year-old friend without a dissension. Nevel* 
saw I his likeness, nor probably the world can 
see it again. I seem to love the house he died 
at more passionately than when he lived. I 
love the faithful Gillmans more than while the)' 
exercised their virtues towards him living. 
What was his mansion is consecrated to me a 
chapel." 



. DEATH OF CHARLES. 333 

A month after this was written Charles Lamb 
followed his friend. A seemingly slight acci- 
dent, a fall which wounded his face, brought on 
erysipelas, and he sank rapidly, dying the 27th 
December, 1834. For once, Mary's affliction 
befriended her. Though her mind was not 
wholly obscured at the time, for she was able to 
show the spot in Edmonton churchyard where 
her brother had wished to be buried, yet it was 
so far deadened that she was unable to compre- 
hend what had befallen her ; and thus she 
remained for nearly a year. 

None thought of Mary with tenderer sympa- 
thy than Landor, or strove with more sincerity 
to offer " consolation to the finest genius that 
ever descended on the heart of woman," as he 
fervently described her. " When I first heard 
of the loss that all his friends, and many that 
never were his friends, sustained in him," he 
wrote to Crabb Robinson, "no thought took 
possession of my mind except the anguish of his 
sister. That very night, before I closed my 
eyes, I composed this : — 

TO THE SISTER OF CHARLES LAMB. 

Comfort thee, O thou mourner ! yet awhile 
Again shall Elia's smile 

Refresh thy heart, whose heart can ache no more. 
What is it we deplore 1 



334 MARY LAMB. 

He leaves behind him, freed from grief and years, 

Far worthier things than tears, 

The love of friends without a single foe ; 

Unequalled lot below ! 

His gentle soul, his genius, these are thine; 

Shalt thou for these repine ? 

He may have left the lowly walks of men ; 

Left them he has ; what then ? 

Are not his footsteps followed by the eyes 

Of all the good and wise ? 

Though the warm day is over, yet they seek 

Upon the lofty peak 

Of his pure mind, the roseate light that glows 

O'er death's perennial snows. 

Behold him ! From the spirits of the blest 

He speaks : he bids thee rest." 

About a month after her brother's death, 
their faithful old friend, Crabb Robinson, went 
to see Mary. " She was neither violent nor 
unhappy," he wrote in his diary, "nor was she 
entirely without sense. She was, however, out 
of her mind, as the expression is, but she could 
combine ideas, though imperfectly. On my 
going into the room where she was sitting Avith 
Mr. Walden, she exclaimed, with great vivacity, 
'Oh! here's Crabby.' She gave me her hand 
with great cordiality, and said, *Now, this is 
very kind — not merely good-natured, but very, 
very kind to come and see me in my affliction.' 
And then she ran on about the unhappy, insane 
family of my old friend . Her mind seemed 



DEATH OF MARY. 335 

to turn to subjects connected with insanity as 
well as to her brother's death. She spoke of 
Charles, of his birth, and said that he was a 
weakly but very pretty child." 

In a year's time she was herself once more ; 
calm, even cheerful ; able, now and then, to 
meet old friends at the Moxons'. She refused 
to leave Edmonton. " He was there asleep in 
the old churchyard, beneath the turf near which 
they had" stood together, and had selected for a 
resting-place : to this spot she used, when well, 
to stroll Out mournfully in the evening, and to 
this spot she would contrive to lead any friend 
who came in summer evenings to drink tea, 
and went out with her afterwards for a walk." 
Out of very love she was content to be the one 
left alone ; and found a truth in Wordsworth's 
beautiful saying, that "a grave is a tranquillizing 
object; resignation, in course of time, springs 
up from it as naturally as the wild flowers 
besprinkle the turf." 

Lucid intervals continued, for a few years 
longer, to alternate with ever-lengthening 
periods of darkness. That mysterious brain 
was not even yet wholly wrecked by the eighty 
years of storms that had broken over it. Even 
when the mind seemed gone the heart kept 
some of its fine instincts. She learned to bear 
her solitude very patiently, and was gentle and 



336 MARY LAMB. 

kind always. Towards 1840 her friends per- 
suaded her to remove to Alpha Road, St. John's 
Wood, that she might be nearer to them. 
Thirteen years she survived her brother, and 
then was laid in the same grave with him at 
Edmonton, May 28th, 1847; ^ scanty remnant 
of the old friends gathering round — " Martin 
Burney refusing to be comforted." 

Coleridge looked upon Lamb "as one hover- 
ing between heaven and earth, neither hoping 
much nor fearing anything." Or, as he himself 
once, with infinite sweetness, put it, "■ Poor Elia 
does not pretend to so very clear revelations of 
a future state of being. He stumbles about 
dark mountains at best ; but he knows at least 
how to be thankful for this life, and is too 
thankful indeed for certain relationships lent 
him here, not to tremble for a possible resump- 
tion of the gift." Of Mary it may be said that 
she hoped all things and feared nothing— 
wisest, noblest attitude of the human soul 
toward the Unknown. 



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